In Your Dreams

Title: In Your Dreams
Pairings: Vegeta x Goku
Author: Rourinu (CrimsonTide)

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Chapter 66 - Final.

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“...You’re waking up.”

Vegeta found himself frozen in place in reaction to his mate’s puzzling but frightening words. Though he didn’t fully understand their meaning, the prince’s stomach felt as if it had dropped out, and his heart was beating furiously in his chest.

Waking up?

Vegeta met Goku’s sad gaze, those dark orbs fading more and more with each passing second.

He panicked.

“What do you mean?! I’m awake! This can’t be a dream, Kakarotto! Dreams aren’t this real!”

The younger Saiyajin’s lips quirked upward into a small smile as he sat up. His hand reached out to touch Vegeta, but the appendage froze before it could make contact with the older man, and it hovered uncertainly for several beats before settling back onto his lap.

“This isn’t a dream. Not really. It’s something you and I created together through a psychic connection.”

Vegeta’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Explain.”

Goku sighed as his eyes drifted off to the side. A thoughtful expression settled over his visage as he contemplated the best way to make his mate understand.

It was several long and agonizingly tense moments before he spoke again, though his voice sounded as far away as ever to the prince.

“I’m still in the lab. With Villa.”

Vegeta could feel the blood drain from his face, the statement hitting him like a sledgehammer. He hadn’t managed to push any words past his lips before the other continued.

“I was going mad, so I kinda...checked out. I’d been trying to reach out to you for years, Vegeta, but I could only ever reach you for short periods of time while you slept. Overtime I got better at it, and I was able to show you things... give you hints as to where I might be.”

The prince nodded absently as he thought back to the nightmares he’d had about the younger Saiyajin. His mind reeled as it struggled to make sense out of it all, and a surge of panic coursed through him as Goku’s body faded a little more.

“Kakarotto....”

“Then one night you didn’t wake up.” Goku continued on, picking up the pace as time grew short. “I don’t know what happened to you in the real world, but your mind stayed accessible to me. My body shut down, and I’ve remained in a sort of... suspended animation. Sometimes I could control what happened between us, but mostly everything was guided by our subconscious or emotions. The longer it went on, the more I was convinced this was all real... that I had really left the lab. But then sometimes I would remember, and the panic would set it, changing the course of our little make-believe reality. The first time that happened was when Villa came back for me.”

The younger man trailed off as he became lost in his own thoughts, and Vegeta’s eyes left his flickering form only long enough to sweep over the rest of the room. Their surroundings were slowly disappearing into an ever growing void of nothingness. A smokey black fog encroached steadily toward them until its edges brushed against the bed’s edges.

He turned his attention back to Goku.

“So none of this has been real? Freeing you from the lab, killing Villa... Momoku?” The mention of his daughter’s name sent a pang of sadness so deep through the prince’s chest that he thought his heart might explode.

The agonized expression that overtook Goku’s visage echoed the same. “No...It all felt so real, Vegeta. I never meant for this to get so out of control... it just... took on a life of its own!”

The fading Saiyajin’s voice became desperate as he studied his mate’s expression.

“It can be real, Vegeta.”

The prince’s gaze once again flickered upward, his brow following a similar path as he silently urged the other to explain himself.

“This...” Goku gestured between the two of them. “Is real. Everything you’ve felt for me, that I’ve felt for you, has all been real. Your thoughts, emotions, wants, needs... they all influenced the path of this thing just as much as mine did. You want this. ‘I’ want this.”

A flicker of hope passed through Vegeta at the other’s words, but the ache that had settled in his chest did not diminish. It seemed like a cruel joke.

“So if I’m waking up... You’ll still be in the lab? The one not far from Capsule Corp like in this... dream?” He knew the younger man had said this wasn’t really a dream, but he had no better word for it.

“Yes.” Goku nodded eagerly. “Unless they’ve moved me since I’ve been here, I should still be there.”

A strong silence settled over the two Saiyajins, and it wasn’t until Goku spoke out in an unsure tone filled with fear that Vegeta was able to meet his gaze again.

“.....You’ll come for me, won’t you?”

The prince didn’t hesitate.

“I’ll come for you.”

The bright smile that lit up Goku’s face after that urged Vegeta forward with the need to hold the other man, to comfort and assure him that everything would turn out just fine; but just as his fingers brushed across the younger Saiyajin’s face, the blackness swallowed him up.

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Vegeta sucked in a strong lungful of air as he shot up in bed. His hands trembled and fisted into the sheets tightly as his jaw clenched, the ache in his chest still present as his heart pounded wildly behind his ribcage.

He immediately tossed the covers back and stood, though a wave of dizziness and a terrible weakness in his legs had him back down on the mattress in no time. Muffled curses escaped from between his teeth as he cradled his head between his hands and waited for the world to stop spinning.

He must have been confined to the bed for quite some time if the simple act of standing on his own two feet ate up his energy so quickly.

Then, as everything slowly came back into focus, a memory began to manifest itself; and it explained why he’d ended up in such a predicament in the first place.

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“Is that all you got, old man?! Come on, I was hoping for a challenge!”

Vegeta growled as he turned his head to the side and spat out a mouthful of blood that had pooled in his mouth after taking a direct blow to his face. His dark eyes glared venomously at the cocky fusion who practically danced with mirth across from him as they hovered over a barren wasteland they used as their sparring grounds. His torn lips peeled away from his teeth as he snarled, flashing sharp and glistening canines.

“Watch it, boy. You test my patience.”

Gotenks rolled his eyes dramatically as he waved his hand dismissively. His duel toned voice was full of sarcasm and condescendence as he replied. “Your patience is boring me. If this is the part where you unleash a crazy amount of power and take me down, get to it. Otherwise, I might just take a nap.”

Vegeta did just that.

Despite the fusion’s words, he seemed genuinely surprised at the influx of power that suddenly radiated from the prince’s body, and he wasn’t able to bring his fists up fast enough to block a punch that whipped his head backwards in an eerily similar display of the attack he himself had just inflicted upon Vegeta. Several teeth flew from his mouth as he plummeted toward the ground in an uncontrolled fall.

Meanwhile, Vegeta hovered with a satisfied grin on his face as he watched the boy smash into the ground. Even while in the air he could feel the earth shake from the impact, and he lost sight of Gotenks as a billowing cloud of dust, dirt, and debris rocketed in all directions.

He was so caught up in his victory that he hadn’t been prepared for the intense beam of sizzling red ki that suddenly broke free of the choking cloud, and he cursed as he threw himself to the side... and directly into one of the fusion’s trademark exploding ghosts.

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Vegeta growled low in his throat as the memory completed itself, and he lowered his hands from his head and again pushed himself to his feet, his stubborn nature aiding him in remaining upright this time.

“Fucking brat.”

The prince crossed the room and opened a drawer that he kept his old white gloves in. He hardly wore them anymore, but they still served a purpose.

He retrieved a glove from the bottom of the pile and shook a senzu bean into his palm. He’d never told anyone about his stash before to ensure they were there for him when he needed them. He had no doubt Trunks or Goten would use the healing beans to fix a scraped knee of rid themselves of a pimple before a date if given the chance.

The prince snorted at the thought and popped the senzu into his mouth, cracking it between his teeth before swallowing it down. Almost immediately he felt his strength return to him and the steady pounding in his head faded away as well. After that he quickly dressed himself and ventured out into the hallway.

He’d only taken a couple steps when he paused in front of an empty room and peered inside. A flash of yellow walls and a crib in his mind’s eyes sparked his memory, and everything he’d experienced came flooding back, bombarding him until the breath caught in his lungs and his heart once again constricted in his chest.

Kakarotto.

Momoku.

Had it really been real, or the product of a bad concussion?

Wasting no more time Vegeta tore off down the hallway. The rest of the house was a blur as he burst into Bulma’s lab and immediately retrieved the dragon radar from a top shelf. He hastily swatted years of built up dust off its surface to make the screen visible.

If it was true---if Kakarotto was really back on Earth--- then the dragonballs would be active, just like in his dreams.

He pushed the button, and after a slight delay, several green dots began flashing in various locations around him.

Once again, he found himself frozen in disbelief as the air caught in his lungs.

It had been real.

“Vegeta! You’re awake!”

The prince hardly noticed as Bulma’s arms wrapped around him from behind, and he only managed a small grunt to acknowledge her presence as his eyes remained fixed in the dragon radar he held in his trembling hands.

“Vegeta?” The woman’s voice was a little less enthusiastic and more concerned, her sharp gaze and observational skills no doubt having picked up his strange behavior. “Are you ok? You’ve been in a coma for awhile... Maybe you should lie back down...”

“No.” The Saiyajin gently extricated himself from Bulma’s hold and set the radar down before heading to the door, his parting words confusing her more than his actions.

“Prepare a room for Kakarotto. I’m bringing him home.”

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Vegeta hovered silently high in the air, the breeze blowing his hair back and away from his face as his intense gaze focused on the large building he clearly recognized from his dreams.

The lab.

He concentrated on the ki signatures inside. Differentiating between the pitifully weak humans was no easy task, and it was several long moments before he felt the familiar flare of a Saiyajin’s energy. It was weak, but it was there.

And it was Kakarotto.

A surge of adrenaline coursed through his veins, and without even making a conscious effort to do so, a crackling ball of glowing ki manifested itself in his left hand as he prepared to attack.

Kakarotto’s words had been true. The feelings he had for the third class had been real; and they had been his own. An intense wave of longing coupled with a pang of sadness coursed through him when he thought of his daughter.

Momoku.

She didn’t exist.

Not yet anyway.

With his resolve to make his and Kakarotto’s dreams a reality reinforced by the thought of his future child, the ball of ki in his hand doubled in size, and he floated almost lazily toward the lab before shooting off like a bullet.

A cruel smirk spread across his face as he closed in.

It would be a pleasure killing Villa again, and this time, there would be no bullet to save him.

The End

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A/N - I can't believe it's over. o.o' I want to thank all my readers and reviewers for sticking with me for so long. Your support and kind words have meant the world to me and kept me motivated. Without all of you, I doubt this fic would ever have been completed.

Thank you.