Chapter Ten
Vegeta had been in the gravity room the whole night.
Similar streaks of pain had been running through his tortured body all night, and the morning brought no relief. Just as another scream erupted, he started to get seriously scared and upset, and unconscious tears ran from his eyes. He let out a loud sob as the pain rush came again. He knew his body was breaking down for good. He couldn't see at all except for blurs of a few different colors, and he coulnd't yell out any words because he didn't have enough breath or consciousness left to do so. He closed his eyes as he screamed again as he waited to be put out of his misery.
"Hey, Bulma! Is Vegeta well enough to spar today?" Goku asked brightly.
Bulma had woken up with red puffy cheeks and wet eyes, and Goku noticed just as his happy voice escaped his mouth. A look of concern crossed Goku's face as he realized that Bulma was very upset about something.
"Bulma, what's wrong? Did someone die?"
"No, Goku, no one died. I…I just had a very big fight with someone and it wasn't very pleasant," Bulma whimpered.
"A fight? With who?"
"You don't really need to know."
"Yes I do, Bulma. You're important to me and I need to know what's bothering you."
"Vegeta got really mad suddenly, and he…said some really god awful things…I got really mad at him."
"And?"
"And…since he was in the gravity room at the time…I…"
"You what?" Goku was a little worried now.
"I…I set the gravity at 400x and shut the door."
"YOU WHAT??!! DAMMIT BULMA, THAT KIND OF GRAVITY WOULD KILL ME!!!!!!!! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?" Goku had an extremely angry and frightened look on his face as he thought about his friendly nemesis being squashed like a bug under the intense effects of the gravity room.
Vegeta again opened his eyes slightly. More intense rushes of agony were sweeping over him, more quickly than before. A few more sparkling tears dripped from his burning eyes. He knew he would die soon. He could feel all his body systems failing. He could no longer breath, except for sharp gasps when the pain wracked his body, and he was halfway into unconsciousness when he suddenly felt like he was floating. Wow, how did my body get so incredibly light? It's like I'm flying…on a cloud or something. He noticed that everything became lighter in color, as the door to the gravity room creaked open.
Goku looked in, shocked to see the story confirmed. Vegeta was lying on the floor, his whole body twitching, and his eyes slightly open with a look of pain and fear in them. Goku noticed that Vegeta had been crying. Goku picked up his short companion gently. Vegeta's eyes darted back and forth, trying to figure everything out, and Goku realized that Vegeta coulnd't even see properly. Bulma quietly sobbed as she realized what she had unwittingly done. Goku glared at her and silently walked out of the room. Bulma sank to her knees and cried.
Goku layed Vegeta down on the table in the re-gen room. He realized that the former Saiya-Jin prince had been close to death. He quietly sat and watched as Vegeta started to mentally recover. His eyes became a little more focused and bright, and he looked around a little.
Vegeta was very confused about what was happening. He couldn't be dead, because he was still in pain, but it wasn't constant, flashing, burning pain like before. As his vision slightly cleared, he began to glance at his surroundings. It made him very dizzy, but he just had to know where he was. He realized with some shock that he was in the re-gen room. He now knew that someone had carried him out of the gravity room to safety a few minutes ago…but who…
Vegeta then looked above him and inwardly gasped. "K…kakka…rott? Wha…what….........you…found….....me?" Vegeta choked out.
"Don't worry about it. You're gonna be fine in a while. After you come to a little more, I'm gonna put you in a re-gen tank, after Bulma tells me how," Goku quietly told his damaged partner.
"Bulma…what a jerkoff…"
"What did you two have a fight about? Why were you even talking to eachother in the first place?"
"No-…none of your…business, Kakkarott…"
Goku nodded silently, then asked Vegeta if he would like to be placed in a tank now. Vegeta wearily gave in and said he would. Vegeta lay greatfully unconscious for the rest of the day as the tank did its duty.
Vegeta lay in the tank for two days. Bulma checked him every waking hour and paced around the CC. When she wasn't by his side, she was pretending to be doing things, but instead, thinking about the next time Vegeta needed to be looked at. On the morning of the third day of recovery, Bulma drained the re-gen tank and waited for Vegeta to become conscious.
He opened his eyes in about three minutes. Slowly and sorely sitting up, he dizzily looked around the room. When his eyes came to Bulma, they stopped.
Vegeta stared at his former companion, and what she had done to him surfaced in his mind. He had the power to destroy half the universe in around a month and a half, and here was this little Earth woman, easily crushing him almost to death in his own training chamber. He did not seethe inwardly, as he usually would, but was shocked, horrified, and disgusted at this crime Bulma had committed. Never in his life would even he pull such an entirely cheap and painful trick, even to Kakkarott. Well…he might have…before…but somehow, not now.
He slid off the tank and turned towards the green-haired woman. Vegeta then spoke to Bulma in his most emotionless, flat, deep, monotone and icy voice he would probably ever speak with in his life.
"You're disgusting, baka." He then whipped his head around and walked towards the door as fast as he could, his shoulders tight and tense. As he made a sharp turn on his heel out the door, Bulma faintly saw a few shining tears fly off his face and hang in the air for a minute, until splashing to the ground and making small puddles.
Bulma walked over to where a tear landed. She wiped it up with her finger and stared at her fingertip, now sparkling with moisture. The tear would not soak into her skin, even as she sat for five minutes. The tears of Vegeta…how priceless…Bulma thought. She grabbed a spare sheet of wax paper from the item basket that was in each room, slid the tears onto them with a toothpick from the nearby kitchen, and then let the tears slide slowly into the bottom of a small, airtight container made for taking samples from patients, such as blood and soforth. Since there was no humid air in this container, the tears would never evaporate. She then labeled the container "Vegeta's Soul," and placed it on her bedside table, along with the snapshot of their first kiss.