Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Hate Is Just Another Kind of Love ❯ and we're so far gone ( Chapter 8 )

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

We got so far, to lose it all, but in the end, it doesn't even matter.

Trunks stared out at the empty plain; lavender grass as far as the eye could see, speckled by slightly darker purple bushes. Racine pulled up a stalk and held it next to Trunks' shoulder-length hair, and grinned.

“You blend right in!” Racine tossed the stalk away, and then turned towards Bardock as the old Saiyajin closed the hatch to the ship. “What's the damage, Gramps?”

“We wait. His Majesty will be here in about twenty minutes.” Bardock looked around, squinting his eyes against the blue sun. “Looks like this world was made for you, Right Hand.”

“You keep calling Trunks that, but I still don't know what it means,” Gohan stretched, tail curling in a question mark behind him.

“He kills in the name of the King. The King extends his Right Hand to his enemies, and his Left Hand to his friends. Executioners and diplomats.”

“Sounds like a dictatorship,” Racine commented.

“Its Saiyajin monarchy. I guess it's all the same, more or less.” Raditz squatted and poked at the pale dust.

“What does it matter? Racine and I won't ever be on Vegetasie.” Gohan sat and curled his legs up as if he meant to meditate.

“No. I don't think any of us will be going back to Vegetasie.” Kakarrot sat next to his son, mimicking his position.

“What about me?” Vegeta wasn't looking at anything other than the horizon as he asked the question. Astute, for eleven.

“We'll be going back.” Trunks put a hand on his son's shoulder.

There was an energy spike, and they turned their collective gazes towards the sky. It took the ship less than ten minutes to land, and Trunks shuddered as it touched the ground. Even Freeza hadn't emanated that much evil when Trunks had killed him. Now that it was so close, though, he supposed that his father must have pulled off some kind of miracle to buy him close to five years to train the kid with no influences from the Saiyajin court. The kid had gotten stronger by leaps and bounds, when he'd had Pan and Serenity to keep as far ahead of as possible. Even by Saiyajin standards, the girls were strong; Trunks wasn't sure who was most proud of them out of the five men in their lives.

They didn't have much longer to wait. The Saiyajin fleet had started landing, and with them, the fleets that Kooler and Kold must have brought with them; they out-numbered the Saiyajin five to one. Not bad odds, Trunks decided. Gohan and Racine needed the challenge.

Hell, they'd spent the last few years training hard for the sake of making Vegeta stronger. They'd trained hard and simply expected him to keep up; it had been motivation enough, since making him train with the girls had become a punishment after the first year. Making him train with Yaumcha and Piccolo might have bordered on cruel, if Trunks had thought that there was anything to be lost by it; as it was, they'd forced him to mature mentally as well as physically. Roshi and Krillin had had their part; without them, Vegeta would have learned nothing about fighting for the sake of fighting, nothing about the challenge for the sake of the challenge. Nearly five years, and Trunks had made his son as perfect a warrior as he could be.

He'd rule with a Saiyajin mind and a human heart; that'd throw the bastards for a loop, even his father.

His father was walking towards him now, looking cold and grim as the Elite trailed behind him. The others fell into step behind Trunks as he started across the purple grass, but he pushed his son to the front; he'd have to at least look like he was in the lead now. He could see the fleets unloading from the ships, pouring out like rats. They met in the middle, keeping an eye across the plain at the enemy ships.

“My son.” Vegeta greeted, looking Trunks right in the eye as if he expected an answer. He'd let his hair grow out while he'd been gone, and he was wearing earthling clothes - did Vegeta really expect him to reveal everything, with half the court standing behind him?

“My father.” Trunks swallowed, then dropped to a knee with his right fist over his heart. “My king.” He could hear Bardock, Kakarrot, and Raditz mimic him.

“Fuck this shit,” Racine sneered, “I came here to kill some lizards, not cow-tow to the bastard that slaughtered my people.”

“Raditz,” the King said slowly, “Did you raise your son in a barn?”

“No, sire. Good warriors don't need walls or a roof.” Raditz grinned suddenly, standing without permission. “Besides, what's the use of teaching a half-breed manners? Ain't that right, son?”

“You never had any manner to teach in the first place,” Racine grinned, as the others stood.

Trunks watched the Elite warriors standing behind his father; finally putting all the pieces together, looking from one set of hard blue eyes to the other, taking in the other half-breeds and double-checking their scouters. Things really must be desperate, if they were all still alive.

“Are you strong enough, kid?” the older Vegeta asked the younger, and that genetic smirk bloomed across three generations of faces.

“I'm stronger than you could possibly imagine.” Such arrogance in that small body! Smirks widened into savage grins, as the Elite looked on with hardening faces.

“Everything's ready.” Trunks said, as he looked across the plain.

The others turned to follow his gaze; one horned giant followed by a blue version of Freeza were heading toward them. Trunks watched his father drain a little, before he turned back to the assembled group.

“Just you and me, Bardock. Vegeta, if anything goes wrong in the next ten minutes, order the attack. Trunks,” he said his son's name for the first time in front of every warrior of the court, “Give them hell to pay.” The two men headed out to the center of the two armies, leaving their sons and people to watch. Bardock flashed a victory sign over his shoulder as he followed his king, not turning to look back. Trunks would remember that for years to come; that they'd walked into their deaths without looking back. Not just true Saiyajin, or brave men; they were real heroes.

Trunks had known something would go wrong; he'd suspected it when Bardock had made his prediction, but he'd only really known as they'd headed out across the purple grass. So he watched Kooler and Kold blow Bardock and his father into ashes from too far back to help, and threw his head back as the scream tore out of him.

He could feel Raditz and Kakarrot screaming with him; that was natural, for them to be enraged over their father and their king. Gohan and Racine joining in was a mild surprise; they'd loved Bardock, even if they still hated Vegeta. But his own son joining in the cacophony, that was a jolt. Vegeta had respected his grandfather, vaguely liked Bardock. No love really lost, there.

But oh, the kid was screaming.

Vegeta was the last to peak; as he settled into Super Saiyajin, the clumps of rock fell back, and the dust cleared. Kold and Kooler stared at them from across the plain, wearing matching looks of surprise. Six matching pairs of pupil-less green eyes focused on the enemy; six heads of glowing gold hair ruffled in the breeze created by their own power; six identical smirks of destructive intent settled on them.

The Saiyajin fleet hung back and watched the wholesale slaughter. It took about a half hour, moving at a fairly sedate pace. When it was done, Raditz, Kakarrot, Racine, and Gohan boarded the ship they'd come in without looking back or saying a word to anyone. Trunks turned to his son, reaching out a hand to put on the kid's shoulder. Vegeta dodged, and looked him in the eye.

“You need to go with them.”

“What?” Of all the times to be ineloquent. Then again, talking had never been what he was good at.

“My sister needs you more than I do. Mom needs you more. You need to go, and I need to stay.” There were tears in the kids' eyes, but he was nothing if not strong. Trunks could feel his own eyes prickling as the realization hit him.

Vegeta hadn't gone Super Saiyajin for the loss of life he'd witnessed, but for the loss of the life he'd never get to have. Bringing the kid home, giving him a taste of a human life he loved when they both knew he had to go back to a place where he would be all alone and surrounded by people.

Trunks didn't know if there'd ever been a father so cruel.

“GO!” Vegeta screamed, as the tears started to fall. Trunks pulled the kid in to hug him, whispered goodbye, and headed back across the plain. “Pop?” He turned, dreading and hopeful. “What are you going to name her?” The tears were streaming down the kid's face, and Trunks felt his heartstrings lurch more painfully then he'd ever thought possible.

“Bra. Your sister's name is Bra.” Vegeta nodded, sniffled hard, and scrubbed futilely at the tears still sliding out of his big green eyes.

Trunks turned and walked back to the ship. Boarded, walked past all the others, and locked himself in his room.

Nearly thirty years old, muffled by the sound of the engines taking off, Trunks cried for the second time in his life.