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Bardock died.

*****

Whiteness.

"It is my sorrow, and my shame. Vegetasei dies, and since I could not save it, I will die with it. But you...You share my defeat, but for your efforts... What wish can I grant you?"

Bardock opened his mouth and then shut it again. He felt so wrong. Was he really dead? He must be. He couldn't have survived that last attack, could he?

The attack that had sliced through him and into the planet below.

He touched his chest and felt nothing but the cool, slick surface of his armor.

There had been light, insane, searing light, and then nothing at all, not even an awareness of loss. How long had he been here after that before he realized that he was thinking again, that he was seeing Heaven? There was no sense of time passing, no sense of ground under his feet or breath in his lungs. How long had it taken for the pattern before his eyes to become something he understood?

He knew instinctively where he was. He stood before the kami of Vegetasei. Kami was a saiyajin girl-child, her robe the color of sunsets and her eyes darker than the night that followed. How old was she? Seven or eight or a thousand years old. Having discovered how to scatter death across the universe, saiyajin rarely needed her, but they remembered. Bardock could not have failed to recognize her; the memory ran in his blood.

Reality shuddered. Somewhere, his home world burned and tore itself apart. Even now the white, eternal plain on which the two of them stood was darkening, tearing, bleeding black and red. What was his wish? He could barely understand the word.

"Beloved child, there is not much time." Such anguish had no place on a face so young.

"I... I want..."He didn't recognize his own stuttering voice. What did he want? Vengeance. Furiza's violent death. At his son's hands, if not his own. "Kakkarot..."

Darkness tore the ground between them. The air seemed to burn. Blood fell from her fingertips, staining the ground. He tried to finish his wish, but it was too late: one gasp of searing air burned his words away.

Kami spoke, her voice coming from a greater distance with each word, even though she still stood only an arm's reach away from him.

"So be it. All I can give you is this: when your time in Hell is done, you will find Kakkarot. Keep your body, your self, your honor. And remember what is lost."

And with that, everything was gone.

*****

Greyness.

The endless, empty plains of Hell stretched before him. Overhead, the heavy cloud cover never broke, and barely altered. The pale light never changed. The sun never set over Hell, nor ever truly rose. Nothing changed. There was no shelter from the bitter winds which never, ever carried any scents. The grey, dead soil bore no life. There were no other beings. No signs from above.

It was, despite its apparent vastness, a very personal Hell. To a creature as social, active, and hedonistic as a saiyajin, this empty, pointless, antiseptic place was an exquisite torment. Of course.

It had, in some ways, stopped serving its purpose, but there was no way of telling if the celestial powers were distressed by this, or even interested. A feeling of abandonment reigned.

Somewhere in this wasteland, Bardock sat with his legs crossed and his eyes closed, some four feet above the ground. He didn't realize that he'd lost contact with the stony earth, nor would he have cared. He'd sat this way for some portion of eternity, having no way or desire to mark the passage of time. He'd lost interest in Hell.

It hadn't always been that way.

When he'd first arrived, he'd tried to find the boundaries, tried to take a measure of the place. He'd wandered endlessly over the plains and flown high to reach the clouds. Both activities had been fruitless. Hell didn't end, and thus there was no way to escape it.

Saiyajins had never believed in a Lord of the Dead, and so he never saw whatever mechanism had judged him and thrown him here. He had no idea what he was supposed to do here. He'd trained to keep his body fit, without knowing whether he really had a body. He sometimes wondered if the death of Vegetasei's kami had thrown Hell out of whack. He was supposed to be tortured or something, right?

It had taken him an embarrassingly long time to realize that he was being tortured after all, just by the nature of Hell itself.

Hell, as saiyajins had understood it, was not a final destination. It was a place where debts came due, where amends were made, freeing the soul for rebirth. Personally, he'd never been able to decide if losing all memories of your life was a tragedy or not, and being dead hadn't cleared that up for him. He was in this place, but did the rules apply to him? He was going to see his son eventually, with his body and soul intact, wasn't he? What did Hell want from him?

Eventually, he'd decided that it wanted nothing from him. And he tried to give it that. Whether it was intuition or the nature of the place that informed him, he didn't know. He went with his guess, though, and it seemed right. He had always practiced meditation as a way of focusing his ki. Now he meditated simply to clear his mind, to stop thinking altogether. To be nothing.

It was surprisingly difficult. Memories fought him. Emotions tried to scald and distract him. His body complained, even though it required neither food nor water now. He fought back the only way he could: by setting each thing aside as it came, resolving guilt, discarding fear, erasing doubt. He let go. It was a slow process, and frustrating, but he had time.

Endless amounts of time.

Finally, he thought of his last child, his second son. He had despised him at birth for his low power level, but called on him for vengeance as he died. He must have known somehow that this son was more than he appeared. He hadn't wanted to see Kakkarot again, though; that hadn't really been his wish. He'd wanted vengeance from his son, not a concrete existence. Not a reunion with the weakling.

Bardock wondered where Kakkarot was now, and if he'd survived, but then put those thoughts aside. He would find out eventually.

The memory of a crying baby came to him. Perhaps the image even appeared in the dead, crystalline air before him, but his eyes had long been shut. He wished now he had held the baby, eased his crying. He was the child's father, without question, and what saiyajin could turn away from his own? Surely he could have paused a moment, could have soothed the baby with a touch or a purr. He could have, but he hadn't done it. He'd read the baby with his scouter and then left, his thoughts already back with Torma and the others before he'd taken more than a step or two.

Why? Because of Kakkarot's power level?

No. The baby had been weak, certainly, but some babies were always like that. Some children didn't even gain their proper strength until they were almost grown. Bardock knew that; his own brother had been that way. So why had he sneered and left the boy there to cry?

The answer was appalling.

He'd abandoned Kakkarot because he was going to lose him anyway. The law had mandated that Kakkarot be sent out to clear some nothing planet, and Bardock would only see him again as an adult, if at all. His child was lost to him the instant his ki had been tested.

And he'd loved him. From the first moment he saw him. That was it, wasn't it? He'd loved him and not been able to bear losing him. Loved him. Loved his Kakkarot.

Such a simple truth.

Bardock could think of nothing else.

Silently, Hell detonated around him, and he was gone.

*****

Darkness.

Moisture on his cheeks.

Bardock thought he was crying until he realized that the wetness was hitting him everywhere. His eyes fluttered open, and he realized with a profound shock that it was dark. Hell was never dark. Hell was never anything so definite. Something cold and wet was falling on him, and he turned his face up, trying to see. What was it?

Rain. The realization rolled like lightning down his spine. It was dark and raining. Then the scents hit his sensitive predator's nose. Wet earth. Wet vegetation. The fresh, turbulent air of a rain storm. His own body. The faint metallic smell of his armor. Torma's blood, still soaking the cloth around his head.

He didn't recognize the world around him. It didn't smell like home. And since it did smell like someplace, and it was dark and raining on him and generally wonderful, he knew he was no longer in Hell.

He raised his arms up to the storm and howled at the skies.

*****

"Fuck you, Kakkarot!"

Goku grinned at his opponent, knowing it would piss him off even more than his offer of mercy had. He and Vejiita could see each other perfectly well in the dark, despite the storm. For one thing, they were saiyajins and used to the nights here. For another, both of them were pulsing with the kind of energy that could destroy solar systems.

"Ok, 'Jiita, if you think you can take another round..." he said, sliding into a combat stance.

"Don't call me 'Jiita, you low-born son of a bitch!"

"Ooooh, language, 'Jiita, language!" Goku wagged a finger at his opponent. He supposed that it wasn't really very nice to taunt him, but sparring was always more fun when Vejiita was mad. The Saiyajin no Ouji should be coming over to kick his ass right about....

Now.

There was a rush of movement, and Vejiita's boot caught him in the chest. Goku caught his ankle before the kick could completely hit home and turned, pulling the prince past him and planting an elbow in his gut before sending him spinning off into the darkness. It was a lucky shot; Vejiita wasn't usually so careless. Maybe the ouji's recently returned tail was throwing off his timing. Goku, whose own tail had returned two years earlier, was far more accustomed to it. For one thing, it was neatly wrapped around his waist. Vejiita's was waving in the wind behind him, the fur bristled out with rage.

Goku had little time to reflect on these matters, though, since Vejiita came flying back at him, this time landing a punch that could have shattered a mountain. Laughing, Goku retaliated. Nothing was better than this.

*****

Bardock stared upwards at the battle. Such power...Even without his scouter he knew he was looking at something beyond anything he'd ever seen before. Surely even Furiza hadn't had that kind of ki.

A barrage of ki blasts came from one of the figures, enveloping their target and splashing past him to explode on the ground below. Dodging madly, Bardock took to the air, knowing that he could evade more easily there. He took up a position far enough away from the pair to give him time to react, yet close enough to let him observe the battle. He was fascinated. Any saiyajin would have been. Such skill, such power.

Another ki blast missed its target, curving near Bardock as it slashed through the air, exploding in fury against a distant hillside. He could feel the strength of it as it passed him, and it chilled his blood. Perhaps he should get out of there. Soon.

He hadn't quite realized how fast they were, though. Before he could turn tail, they had closed half the distance and were getting closer, without seeming to notice he was there.

Bardock crossed his arms and stood his ground. It wasn't as if he had any chance of getting away now, and if he fled, they would see him doing it. Despite being outclassed and completely out of his element, he waited until they drew close. What else would a self-respecting saiyajin do?

The two came near, fighting wildly, and then the shortest of the pair drew back, his hands clasped, and screamed. Dazzling light erupted from his palms, perfectly illuminating his face.

Things happened with a certain sleepy grace after that, moving with absurd slowness.

The taller fighter leaped higher into the air, and though the blast of ki followed his movement somewhat, it was no match for his speed. Once past him, it continued on its new trajectory, straight towards Bardock.

Sadly, Bardock wasn't paying as much attention to that as he should have been. He was distracted by his apparent sudden insanity. He must have gone mad. That was the only real explanation for what he'd seen in that flash of light. There was no other good reason for King Vejiita to be here, wherever here was, fighting with someone who could have been Bardock's twin.

Eventually, Bardock's stunned brain told him that the sphere of energy coming at him was a spectacularly bad thing, but by then there was only one response he could make: Bardock passed out cold and fell from the sky.

It had been a busy day.