Chapter One: In which a loss is made manifest

The first of the Very Wrong Things that Goku noticed upon returning to Earth was the spiking ki. It was definitely Vegeta's—he had been familiar with it for over a decade now, plus they'd just spent the last three months training on Beerus's planet together. But this feeling was not normal. Even from miles away, Vegeta's ki was abnormally strong, so bright as to be blinding. Worse, it was flickering erratically, and something was…wrong…about it. Goku immediately put his fingers to his forehead to transmit.

The second Very Wrong Thing hit his ears as soon as he arrived at a hallway in Vegeta's house. In all the years he'd known the man, Goku had heard a lot of different tones in Vegeta's voice. Anger, mostly. Contempt, a close second. Occasionally even humor or contentment. But this was something he'd never heard before. Vegeta was…the only word he could think to describe it was keening. Unintelligible words were coming from his mouth in a pleading tone, interrupted with outright sobs. Goku entered the room apprehensively.

There he saw the third Very Wrong Thing. Vegeta was sitting on the floor, holding something in his arms protectively. Goku's blood froze, his breath pressed from his lungs, as he saw the blue hair tumbling out. His mind struggled to reject the sight, but the pieces kept coming together until he could no longer deny what he saw. His oldest friend lay there dead in her husband's arms—her eyes open but glazed over, her neck bruised and hanging at an angle no living neck could have. Bulma, no, he thought. Everything else in the world went grey, and his mind spun as his chest was crushed from the realization. Please, Kami, no.

Goku had just managed his first breath, when Vegeta's head whipped around to face him, and the last of the Very Wrong Things occurred. As his eyes focused on Goku, they instantaneously changed from a dead numbness into a black hatred. "You…" the Saiyan prince growled. Goku backed away. There was murder in the other man's eyes and voice. Sure, Vegeta had claimed to want to kill him for most of the time Goku had known him, but this look of actual homicidal rage was something he hadn't seen since their first meeting. Maybe not even then—at that point Vegeta would have been happy to kill him, but right now it seemed like the prospect of tearing his heart out was the only thing in the universe keeping Vegeta breathing.

"Vegeta, what—" was as far as he got before the other man leapt at him with a roar, his hair glowing blue, lightning crackling in the aura of his ki. Goku barely managed to pull up his own Super Saiyan form before the fist slammed into his chest, knocking him through three walls and driving the breath out of him. Instantly, Vegeta was on him again.

"THIS IS YOUR FAULT!" he screamed in pain and fury, throwing an uppercut that drove Goku hundreds of feet into the air. Goku barely managed to get his breath back when Vegeta quickly flew up to meet him with a knee to the gut. "YOUR FAULT! YOU! BASTARD!"

Goku desperately threw up his arms to block the wild blows, but not even Beerus had managed to dodge Vegeta's fists when he was driven by this mindless anger. He's really trying to kill me, thought Goku.

The hits came like a rockslide. Blow followed blow, without a second of respite given between. Goku was driven back and back, each impact a sledgehammer on concrete.

"Vegeta, stop!" he yelled desperately. But the attack continued. No reply was made, no quarter given. Only unintelligible shouts of fury and wild, savage blows. Goku threw his own punches, but he was holding back; he didn't actually want to hurt his friend. His blows were shrugged off like they were nothing, Vegeta's return strikes not letting up in the slightest.

A pair of fists slammed into Goku's collarbones, smashing him down into the ground. Passers-by screamed as chips of concrete flew up toward them, and tires screeched nearby as a car desperately slammed its brakes to avoid the new Saiyan-shaped crater in the road. The city's too crowded, Goku thought. We're gonna hurt someone if we stay here. Fingers to forehead, he brought himself behind Vegeta and grabbed on to his shoulder, then teleported them both again. In a split second, the buildings and concrete were replaced by the trees and earth of the great forest to the north of the city. It was empty here, and Goku could try to talk Vegeta down without worrying about casualties.

"Please, just talk to me!" he shouted into Vegeta's ear. But there was no response beyond an elbow slamming into his ribcage. Goku heard more than felt the sharp crack of at least one rib breaking, and his grip on the other man was lost. The change in scene was no distraction to Vegeta as his attacks kept coming. Goku's arms were beginning to numb from the repeated attempts to shield his body, and he could feel his muscles slow with each block.

A high kick slammed into the side of his skull, tearing the skin of his brow ridge. The vision on Goku's right side went black as hot blood poured over his eye. When he brought his hand up to wipe it clear, Vegeta took advantage of the distraction and slammed a knee directly into Goku's kidney. Pain ripped through him and he went flying, slamming into several full-grown trees and plowing a deep furrow in the earth.

Dazed from the impact, Goku sprawled unmoving on the ground. The ground was a nice place to be, he realized. The ground was comfortable and cool—at least, compared to the fire spreading from his kidney. Goku was pretty sure the organ was ruptured. Great, he thought, I'm going to be peeing blood for a week. The smell of the earth and sap from the shattered trees lulled him toward unconsciousness, and he might have passed out there if the air had not suddenly turned acrid with the smell of an electrical fire. Goku opened his eyes to see Vegeta above him, hands together gathering a wicked purple ball that Goku recognized immediately, even before the words reached him.

"GALICK—"

If he fires that here, he could take out the whole continent, Goku realized with horror. His hands shot out automatically to counter. "KA-ME-HA-ME—"

"GUN!" "HA!" The blasts fired in tandem, the shock wave of their meeting tearing through every cell in Goku's body. The purpose was met; the energy shot out through the forest and knocked down every tree hundreds of feet around, but the impact was dispersed before hitting the ground.

Okay, this needs to end. Now. Goku struggled to his feet, trying not to succumb to the vertigo washing over him as the exchange of blows resumed. His back was on fire, the taste of blood filled his mouth. The shouts and cries from early in the fight had given way to the quiet sound of panting breaths as each man reserved his energy for fighting. Goku knew he was approaching the limits of his endurance. He could no longer afford to try to end this without serious violence.

Thankfully, he could see that though Vegeta's pain and fury were granting him strength and stamina, they were dulling his usually sharp sense of battle—he was wild, feral, lacking his normal strategy. Goku just had to manage not to die until he could find—

There. Goku saw his chance as Vegeta swung wildly with his left arm, the one Goku knew was unstable from an old injury. He ducked beneath the blow then grabbed the arm, planted a foot on Vegeta's chest, and pulled. Vegeta screamed in pain as Goku felt the pop of the bone separating from its socket. Tendons and ligaments tore apart like overstretched taffy, and suddenly the arm was about three inches too long.

Goku couldn't risk allowing Vegeta to recover; the fight would keep going until Vegeta simply couldn't physically move anymore, and he had to make that happen as soon as possible. Keeping a painful grip on the injured arm to immobilize his opponent, Goku tangled one foot behind Vegeta's knee, then kicked out as hard as he could with the other.

His foot slammed into the side of the knee with the force of a hurricane making landfall. The joint shattered. End this end this end this, Goku thought to himself. Gathering every ounce of ki he could, he charged his power until he could feel his skin crackle and swung Vegeta with all his strength into the ground. Dust flew up into the air, obscuring vision. The sound of the impact rolled like thunder through the forest.

Goku landed next to the crater. "Are we done, Vegeta?" panted Goku without dropping his guard. "I don't want to hurt you any more. Can't you just tell me what happened?"

Vegeta tried to rise, but his injured leg gave out and he fell to one knee, cradling his left upper arm to keep the shoulder still. And there he paused, his whole body shaking. He raised his head and glared at Goku, but this time his anger was mixed with a hopeless anguish. "You just had to let him live. You had to suggest him for our team and you fucking agreed to let him stay alive in return." Vegeta's head dropped as a sob escaped him. "You just had to be the fucking nice guy, as always."

"Who—" started Goku, but then realization hit him. Oh no. Oh, no no nonono. His mouth felt like it was filled with sand as the whisper escaped him. "Frieza. Frieza did this."

Vegeta nodded as his hair dropped back down to black. The anger that had been fueling him drained into the ground, leaving only bottomless grief. "He was waiting," he said quietly. "He was waiting until we were away and couldn't sense him coming. I should have known he'd never just go his own way. I should have known he'd never let me get away with defying him."

Goku let go of his ki and approached Vegeta. He knelt next to the other man. "We'll get her back, Vegeta. We'll gather the Dragon Balls and get her back, and then we'll go beat Frieza back to Hell."

Vegeta shook his head as a laugh of pure despair escaped him. "No we won't, Kakarot. He already used them. He found them and summoned the dragon, and he wished for regeneration. Immortality. Of course." He looked up with hopeless eyes. "But the orbs don't just give one wish anymore. And he used his second to wish that no one he killed personally could ever be resurrected." His voice dropped to a whisper. "She's gone. Forever."

The magnitude of this slammed into Goku like a truck. Gone. She was gone. He had gotten so used to death being a temporary setback that he had barely considered that anyone he loved could ever be truly gone. The feeling of loss was overwhelming, the world tunneling into blackness so deep that he almost missed the next words.

"He killed my wife, Kakarot. And when he left, he took my children."