Anyone who is reading 'Love is a Four Letter Word' please don't kill me for putting this fic out instead of a new chapter! This thing has been running in circles around my brain just begging to be let out, so here it is. A short little POV/get together from our favorite couple.

WARNING #1: This does have a bit of swearing and adult situations, but I don't think its technically lemon-flavored at all. If you think it is, please don't flame me, just let me know nicely!

WARNING #2: This is a somewhat dark fic! Not all fluffy warm and fuzzy, just to let you know.

P.S. For any who are wondering; accendo (Latin) - to kindle, illuminate, inflame

Accendo

"One man scorned and covered with scars

still strove with his last ounce of courage

to reach the unreachable stars;

and the world will be better for this."
-- Cervantes

I can't tell who was more surprised that first time; myself for even making the offer, or he for accepting it. I think it would qualify as the most important moment in my life, one of those things where you can tell even as it is happening that your life will never be the same again. At it wasn't.

To this day, I can't really say why I did it. I'd like to claim loneliness, or maybe just boredom, or one of a million other reasons that sound normal when I say them out loud. But none of them come close to the real truth, the one I don't even know I could bring myself to tell him. In a way I guess it could qualify as desperation but not the kind of desperation you normally think of. I had never really been the kind of person to be ruled by lust.

Over the past year or so I could feel myself slipping. Sliding faster and faster backwards into a pit. Some people might have called it depression. Some stagnation. Either way even I knew it wasn't normal, or healthy. But what did it matter? I was so tired...tired of the way my life was going. Yamcha was gone long ago, sacrificed to his own wandering heart and eyes. All around me we were throwing our faith and our future into the hands of a few. It all seemed so futile.

At night I would lie awake in the still darkness of my room, unable to sleep. Unwilling to. Closing my eyes only brought the words of that purple-haired boy drifting back to haunt me, ghosts that couldn't be exorcized. I could see the future he described, see myself alone for the rest of my life. Everyone I cared for gone, all my dreams dried up and blown away like dead autumn leaves. I think that's when it began. After I had convinced myself that my nightmares would be real. I could feel myself withdrawing from everyone, slowly and methodically cutting out the parts of me that could still bleed. I used silence and pain as a tourniquet, to kill the parts of myself that would still feel so that I would be dead inside. Because I knew that if I didn't I would never be able to survive when they were all ripped away from me. The thought of Goku rotting away in his well-deserved grave woke me screaming, and I couldn't bear to think about my parents, their voices silenced forever by a power I couldn't control.

There was only one person who was still able to get a reaction of any kind from me. There had always been something that fascinated me about him. I think it was his eyes. They always made me feel so...small. Like a bird faced with a snake, utterly hypnotized by the glittering onyx of his stare. At first I hated him for it. Never in my life had anyone managed to make me feel as insignificant as he did. It wasn't right. By all accounts I was his superior! I was powerful, rich, intelligent, beautiful...hell, I was as close to fucking royalty as it got here on this planet. And that was what irked me so badly, that this swaggering relic of a dead race's monarchy could show up on my planet, live off my hospitality, and still somehow manage to make me feel as if I wasn't worthy enough to lick the dirt off the toes of his boots. For the most part we avoided each other like the plague, only pausing on rare occasions to trade venomous barbs before returning to our normal solitary lives.

It was late in the evening when things finally came to a head. I was in the shower when the realization that we had exactly two years to the day before the androids arrived stopped me dead in my tracks. Like a hideous broken record the prophetic words rang in my head, over and over. I saw the stuff of my nightmare rise up before my eyes, the desolation of my world. It was all so empty...so lonely. My fear of being alone sparked a rising inferno of panic. I could picture myself on that barren stretch of earth year after year, saw myself standing on the same desolate hilltop over the ruins of my old home as I grew older and grayer. Would I die alone? Would there be anyone to notice my passing? Or would I slip quietly away, humanity's chapter in the book of the universe finally coming to an end?

I had looked into the void, and what I had seen had sent me running, screaming into the corners of my own mind to cower in fear. That was how he found me. Huddled in the shower where I had been for the last hour and a half, not even noticing when the water went from hot to warm to freezing. Not really caring anymore. Numbness was good, numbness was freedom, feeling was pain. I barely heard him bursting through the bathroom door, his eyes widening slightly as they took in the scene before him. I remember hearing his muttered "Shit..." as he turned the cold water off, and then his more colorful expressions as he carefully lifted up my unclothed body, skin so cool and white that even I couldn't tell where it ended and the porcelain began. I smiled at the absurdity of the situation: Was he rescuing someone? Rescuing me from myself? The cold sounds of my laughter bounced off the hard bathroom tiles to slap me, and the note of hysteria that had crept in startled both of us, I think. I knew that I was barely hanging on, walking the shining razor's edge between calm and madness.

I rested my head on his chest as he carried me towards my bedroom, his heartbeat pounding in my ears like the waves of an ocean, rhythmic and strong. I felt almost like a child again, being cradled against my mothers chest and pretending that my heartbeat and hers would beat in perfect synchrony. Only hers was never as loud or as fast as his was at that moment. I could feel the pulse of it against me cheek and I knew it was fear spurring it faster. He was afraid...for me?

Pulling back the crisp sheets of my bad he laid me upon it, as gently as if I were a soap bubble that might burst and disappear at any moment. Carefully he drew the covers up and over me and then stood over me, his black eyes burning into mine but without any of their usual malice.

"I'll go...get help." he muttered hesitantly, his hands moving awkwardly as if not sure where to put themselves. It was the first and only time that I have ever seen him look remotely helpless, his dark eyes darting around the room, torn between staying and leaving. Finally they came to rest on me and I shivered under the intensity of that glare.

"...Why?" he finally ground out and I knew that there was so much contained within that word. Why was I in that bathtub?...Why had he helped me?...Why did I tolerate him?...Why did I care?...Why did he care? Every question either of us had ever asked ourselves was within that word and the answers circled inside my brain like a flock of crows. I couldn't calm my thoughts enough to pluck one out for him and I just stared with my mouth open, wanting to say so much and nothing at the same time.

He misinterpreted my silence and turned towards the door to leave when something inside of me burst, finally prodding my frozen body into action Faster than even I knew I could move I sat up on my knees, one hand flung outwards to rest on his forearm before he walked out on me and my life returned to its sham of normality. Licking lips that had gone bone-dry I whispered his name, more than half expecting him to shake my hand off with a trademark sneer and continue out the doorway. To my surprise he flinched slightly before stopping and facing me, his expression the kind of absolute neutrality I knew he used when his emotions were most turbulent. Slowly I rose from the bed unconcerned by my nakedness and stood before him, my hand still on his arm. An eternity passed while we stood there, black eyes meeting blue as I desperately tried to make sense of what I saw rolling within their depths. The truth of him came to me in a startling rush as for one brief moment I saw myself through his eyes, saw how he wanted me. His need went deeper than just that of the body. I saw how my joy, my purity, my faith shone for him like a lantern in the darkness. How he wanted to cup that tiny light to himself, to warm his hands with my small flame, and how afraid he was that if he tried he would simply snuff it out like a clumsy man with a candle.

The darkness of his soul was so pervasive...I could feel myself attracted and repelled by it. I saw the depths of it, the cold silent waters where leviathans of sin dwelled. I wanted to plunge my hands into it to warm him with my heat, but I knew that I couldn't without drinking and taking some of that cold dark water into myself.

Maybe that was why I asked him to stay. Maybe I wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. If my world was to come to an end in a few short years I wanted to be able to say that I had tried to make it some kind of a better place. Maybe I just wanted to save something. Maybe it was just that I was so tired of being numb, even pain was good because it meant you were still alive, you could still feel something. And there's always the reason that I am afraid to admit even to myself...that all of us have that part of ourselves we hide, the dark cruelty of our true selves, and that his sang to mine like a siren's call.

"Please...don't go..." I whispered, as the tears filled my eyes and threatened to spill over.

Somehow, the words were out of my mouth before I had even realized that I had made up my mind. The only answer I got from him was a small tremor that ran through his body and a hitch to his breathing. Shyly I placed my other hand on his free arm, painfully aware of my nudity as I slowly ran my hands up his arms, along his shoulders to rest on his chest. He was no longer looking at me, his stoic expression focused somewhere over my left shoulder as he studiously avoided my eyes. I could feel his heart pounding beneath my palms as I stretched upwards, rising onto my toes and bringing my cheek parallel to his.

"I won't be what you want me to, Bulma... I don't know how." he replied, wanting me to know that I shouldn't expect more than this night.

"Please...make me feel something again, Vegeta. Even pain is better than numbness." I whispered by his ear, the words startling even me as I realized their truth. I was tired of feeling numb, I wanted to live again. His lips trembled slightly as he turned his head towards me, one small movement that put our faces so close.

"Is that what you believe?" he replied, his normal growl softened to almost a whisper. I shivered as the motion of his mouth stirred the air above my lips, so close together. "That pain will solve your problems?"

"You tell me." I shot back, but my words lacked their usual bite as I continued. "At least I would know I was still alive. You can cut yourself to see if you still bleed, to see if you're still alive. I need to know I haven't strangled every piece of my heart." We both stood absolutely still while studying each other's faces, so close that he could have closed the distance anytime. But he didn't. I knew that I would have to be the one to move, that ultimately the consequences of this night would be my responsibility alone.

An eternity passed before I made my decision. Leaning on the balls of my feet I kissed him softly, light as butterfly wings as I braced myself on his chest. Only his half-parted mouth and frantically beating heart let me know that he wanted this. He stood stiller than a marble statue as I finished brushing my lips over his until I started to pull away. Before I had felt him move one hand was balled into the hair at the back of my skull, light pressure forcing my head back and away from his as the other arms curled around my back. I saw the whites of his eyes, wide and flashing like a frightened horse as they scanned my face. Making a small noise deep in his throat he lowered his face to mine and kissed me back, lightly forcing my lips apart to flick his tongue across mine in a quick touch. Growling softly he deepened the kiss into something almost bruising, the muscles in his neck working slightly as our tongues laced together and it felt as if I was being devoured one lick at a time, eaten from the mouth down. Without a word I was swept into his arms and deposited back on the bed while he ripped his own pants off, all the time maintaining the long wet line of our kiss.

I'd like to be able to say that our first time was incredibly romantic. Maybe like one of those scenes from a romance novel, where the hero spends the entire time gushing about the perfection of the heroine's blue-veined breasts while lightly teasing her to a beautiful climax. But it wasn't. His need was large and fierce and so was he. It was hard and fast, brutal and desperate, yet somehow satisfying. I gave myself over to the act completely, not thinking not speaking not doing, just feeling. And despite the primitiveness of it all it was wonderful. Because it was just what I had asked him for.

Somewhere in the midst of it a thought pierced the fog of climax surrounding my brain, screaming at me to take notice. I realized during that shining moment exactly what this man meant to me. I realized that our furious joining was as much about anger as it was attraction. Extracting tiny hurts from each other in return for those exacted upon us. And I realized that this was what I had needed all along. The depth of his passion amazed me and relit the fires that used to blaze so brightly within me.

"Do you regret this?" he asked me later while we were still lying in a tangled heap of limbs on my bed. I swallowed back the lump that had formed within my throat. How did I explain to him? I didn't regret what we had done...I regretted my reasoning for it because I knew now that he would walk away from me, away from this fragile thing we had created without a second thought.

"No..." I whispered the lie, the word stabbing into my heart like a stiletto. I would have rather died than made him feel trapped by my decisions. He must have heard the tremor in my voice because he shot me a sharp glance.

"I don't want you to feel pain, little one." he grudgingly admitted a few minutes later, his eyes distant.

I shook my head slowly. "You have only done what I asked. This was my decision." I forced the whisper through my tightening throat and fought back the tears that threatened to fall. His face slowly rose in my line of sight as he propped himself above my body to stare down at me.

"No. You misunderstand me." he began, and then broke off to lay a tiny kiss on my throat where the shoulder and neck meet. He allowed me to pull his chin up with one hand, where I searched ebony orbs for his true intent. Words that I knew he could never say rose from their depths like bubbles to burst at the surface, plain as day to read. I had never seen him allow so much emotion into his eyes.

"Stay?" I whispered a moment later, half-playfully, to cover up the fact that I was so afraid of the answer my heart was in my mouth. Seconds later his lips were covering my smiling mouth again, his last word still hanging in the air like a beacon of hope.

"Stay."

Finis