Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Hate Is Just Another Kind of Love ❯ going home ( Chapter 5 )

[Insert standard disclaimer here] This has gone through some basic revision; please let me know what you think.

And a child shall lead them...

Trunks watched his son dart across the training room, little fists held high and tight, as the boy attacked Nappa. It took every ounce of self control to stay still and remain calm; he knew Nappa wouldn't hurt the Crown Prince, but watching the bastard butcher his people had engrained one reaction in Trunks.

The burly Saiyajin batted the child away, relatively gentle. The kid wasn't doing great today, and would probably spend the night in a regen tank, but it was better than telling Nappa to go do anatomically impossible things with his tail, and dealing with the rumors at court. He'd taken Bardock's advice, and kept his mouth shut and his face blank, but there were still suspicious glances thrown his way. He'd come suddenly, from no where, into a position close to the King, and suddenly Vegeta's enemies had started dropping like flies; most Saiyajin weren't completely stupid.

Nappa was, though. He liked to hit things, without much else going on for either a personality or a brain; he was loyal more to tradition than he was to the throne, but Vegeta needed allies with the old blood. Since the secret had been well kept and well disposed of, there wasn't a lot to worry about. The courtiers had chalked up Vegeta's blue eyes to his mother's Norseki heritage, rather than look up and notice the supposed Norseki that dogged the boys every step.

It was easier to believe in tradition, than to acknowledge the fact that their king was a blood traitor with no right to the throne. True, there had been the initial enemies of the throne when Trunks had come, but they'd died bloody deaths at the Right Hand of the King; proving that Vegeta had not been weak, merely hiding his hand until all of his enemies were revealed.

There had been questions about where Bardock and his sons had disappeared to; questions that had become unimportant as soon as Saiyajin opposing King Vegeta started dropping dead. There were suddenly other things to focus on, like what the King and his new Right Hand might know. Trunks didn't really care; Vegeta raised his right hand in a balled fist, and his Right Hand slaughtered. Most of the Saiyajin that had lived on Earth during the Saiyajin occupation were dead, and by his hand. The wherefores bothered him less than then whether or not he'd brushed his hair that morning, which he usually didn't. It was a measure of self preservation, because his hair became more Saiyajin and unruly the less he brushed it. He'd kept it carefully cut, because Saiyajin hair stopped growing, and wore sleeveless jumpsuits to show the Moko down his right arm. It was a good disguise.

The point, though, was that Saiyajin died, and there was a sort of balance. End of moral debate.

When Trunks scooped his son's limp body off the training room floor, he did so without meeting Nappa's eyes, ignoring the challenge. It was hard to tell if he was being insulting or merely performing a duty; Nappa would assume the former. Ignoring Nappa was more duty than choice, though, because his father still needed the man's influence among the nobility, the sanctimonious pricks with tradition shoved so far up their collective asses that it was gag inducing to everyone involved.

Trunks laid his son in the regen tank gently, watched the boy float peacefully in the green slime, and considered. He had the Vegeta wild, upswept hair and sharp widow's peak, which was lucky for the boy. Trunk's eyes, deep and dark and blue, though, and that wasn't so lucky. There was nothing of Angerine in the boy's face, really. He had the same little ticks, though; the way she pursed her lips just before she started hitting something with absolutely no intention of stopping, the way one eyebrow quirked up when she was being sarcastic. That seemed to be genetic, more than anything, the same way the kid smirked and grinned savagely like his father and grandfather.

Trunks had been raised to be well mannered and polite to people he wasn't trying to kill; his father dealt only in respect, and whether or not a person had earned it. The kid, though, gave his respect cautiously, was polite out of caution, and was bitingly sarcastic no matter what he thought of you. Definitely his mother. Trunks thought about Angerine constantly, with the reminder of their relationship always in front of him; he wondered, sometimes out of guilt and sometimes out of morbid curiosity, how often Vegeta thought of Bulma.

He tried not to think her name - it would run the risk of saying it out loud. And saying that name out loud, in this court, would spell disaster if it ever reached Nappa's ears. Not just for King Vegeta, or just his Right Hand, but for all three. One little hint of the woman who'd spawned this situation, and the jig was up. King Vegeta's throne hinged on one Bulma Briefs, just as strongly in death as it had in life.

Trunks rested his hand on the glass of the tank, and wondered what he'd done in his previous life to deserve watching his son be pummeled by the idiot he wanted to kill the most. Bardock would have been in Nappa's place, if he'd not gone back to Earth, his sons, and his grandsons. Trunks half envied the man. Half wished Angerine loved him back. Wondered if she were grateful to still be alive.

Stupid thought; how she felt or what she thought no longer mattered. Not even if he loved her.

His father shook him awake near midnight, slumped in a chair he'd dragged close to the tank.

“We wont be sparring today. Freeza will be here soon.” They stared at the tank, and its floating occupant, for a long moment. “He'll want the kid, but he'll ask for my son. If he asks for my heir, I'll have to send both of you. How quickly do you think you can kill him?”

“I'll have to wait for him to set foot on a planet. Fighting that kind of power on a space ship is somewhere between pure idiocy and suicide. Unless you can figure out where he's planning to land next, I can't give you an accurate time frame.” Trunks turned his gaze from his son to his father, and looked up at the King of all Saiyajin as the older man considered carefully.

“She had a gift for machines.” They both knew who `she' was, what that comment implied, and what was coming next. “Freeza will break the boy, completely, within a matter of months. You absolutely cannot let that happen. Do something, anything, to force him to land. Kill him; destroy whatever fleet he's got with him. Depending on how politics have changed, you should be up against Dordia, Zarbon, and the Ginyu Force. Freeza keeps files on his soldiers, no matter how lowly; you should be able to get a good idea of what you're up against fairly quickly.”

“You'll have to send both of us anyway. There's no way Freeza will leave this planet without the kid. If we make our stand here, we'll probably end up destroying the planet.” Trunks focused back on the tank, and felt the bile rise at the thought of that little fragile body in reptilian hands.

“Take Nappa with you. He'll keep the kid safe while you're busy, come hell or high water. Kill him last, and split for Earth. Lay low there for a few years. Bardock knows how to contact me. When Kooler and King Kold come calling, I'll need all of you.” Vegeta reached out, and Trunks clasped his father's hand as the older man tightened his grip on the half-breed's shoulder. “He'll be here in a few hours. Get ready.” Vegeta left, not looking back.

The blue-eyed Vegeta floated in his tank, asleep and maybe dreaming. Trunks stared for a long time, wondering where six years had gone. He'd be twenty-five in a few months. Ten years old when the Saiyajin had left Earth, sixteen when he'd come to Vegetasie, seventeen when he'd become a father, and twenty-five when he took his six year old son home.

He'd missed Gohan and Racine, Yaumcha and Krillin, Tien and Piccolo, even the sometimes-warrior Yajarobe.

He'd even missed Bardock.

Angerine would be there.

Trunks sighed, and leaned back to wait, like he'd been taught. It was all there was to do, before the lizard came, and then he wouldn't have time to breathe until he was locked in a pod, son curled on his lap, and on his way home.

Finally going home.

He wasn't sure if it was a blessing or a curse.