A word is dead when it is said,
some say.
I say it just begins to live that day.

- Emily Dickinson

O

The wind was angry as he touched down near his pod, the girl's prone form thrown limply over his shoulder. One of the suns had completely set; the other did not appear far behind. Good, he thought. Finally. No suns meant less heat. Less heat meant he could work unhindered. He cast suspicious eyes to the blushing skyline. With two suns, it was unlikely the nights here lasted long. But even a few hours reprieve from the heat would be enough time to finish the job. The thought of staying even one more day…

But first…

He grabbed a handful of material and yanked. Knees banged and scraped against his armor on their descent, and when he set her on her feet, she swayed backwards. His eyes narrowed. Admittedly their subsequent flight probably had a lot to do with her disorientation. He suspected it was the only reason he hadn't been kneed, clawed, or otherwise maimed during the trip—

Her head lolled. He caught her just as her knees buckled beneath her. Fingers crawled through her hair, jerked her to him. She made a noise, something between a grunt and a cry, and thin arms pushed ineffectually against him as he studied her.

Her face was ashen. The right side was swollen and colored from his blow, and tear tracks dried in trenches along her cheeks. But most startling were the eyes. Vivid amber-orange. They looked…were a strange combination against the dark skin. Deformed was the word, he thought distastefully. These were not Saiyan eyes. These were alien and foreign and wrong—

If not for the tail, he would never have recognized her.

He would have fucked her and killed her, (and still planned to do the former) because outwardly she looked – was- nothing like a Saiyan. Too thin, too soft, too weak. She was a mutation; impure of blood, strangely colored and shaped and altogether wrong, and had the Saiyan race still been around, she would have been killed at birth. Saiyans, he remembered, had not been kind to half-breeds.

But who sired her?

The planet Vegeta had been gone now for nearly twenty years. (…actually that number was probably closer to sixteen or seventeen, but he was never sure which). He was sure, however, and with near certainty, that Nappa had never set foot on this planet. By default this ruled out Vegeta as well, because the young prince was never without at least one of them.

So then, was there another Saiyan out there besides the three of them…?

He thought briefly of his brother, but the only image his mind would conjure was that of an infant, small and pink and crying with balled fists and impossibly black hair. And he was likely dead anyway, he dismissed. Regardless, this girl was too old to have been sired by Kakkarrot. And his scouter hadn't picked up any particularly strong readings—

…which meant that whomever the Saiyan, male or female, they were long since gone from the planet. Or dead.

Or both, he conceded. Hmn.

He ran a calloused finger down her jaw, and suddenly, abruptly, the glazed look in her eyes cleared. She was fighting against him, vicious and hateful. Snarling and bucking and pulling and screaming—

His grip tightened in her hair, and he wrenched her neck back –hard -until she let out a choked gasp. She was far from compliant; her body trembled with barely restrained emotion, but for the moment at least she remained still, breathing in shallow pants that fanned puffs of warm air against his face.

Stupid, he thought irritably. His gaze dipped from her face to her neck, where a rapid pulse beat. The skin there was smooth, lightly beaded with sweat. The sight of it, exposed, bare before him, her legs tangled against his own, eyes screwed tightly shut, body pressed forcefully against him, made him aware of her in a way that had him cursing under his breath. No time—

The door of his pod opened with a whoosh; he threw her in.

Too hard, he realized belatedly. Her head hit the console with a dull thud, and when after a few moments she finally stirred, her motions were disturbingly sluggish. "Shit," he muttered. The readings on his scouter fluctuated between 6 and 8. Oh hell. Are you fucking kidding me—? Her power level had dropped eleven points in less than three minutes. There was no fucking way she could be that weak—

But then those feral, orange eyes met his own, lips pulled back in a silent snarl that revealed faintly pointed canines. Like his own. Like a Saiyan's. He smirked. What other similarities were there between them? What differences? More importantly, was there enough Saiyan blood to cancel out whatever weaknesses she'd inherited from the other genes?

He slammed the pod door shut and watched her through the window. The emotions that played across her face were sickening in their openness. Fear. Panic. Fury. Hysteria. Grief. All running together in a looping mass. It grated at his nerves. Such an unshielded mind… He couldn't fathom displaying such weakness. It was tantamount to defeat. Instinct alone should have stamped it out of her…

Impossibly thin fingers –joined to impossibly thin hands that couldn't possibly have been made for fighting - lay flat against the window, fast becoming fogged by errant gasps. She was literally coming apart at the seams.

Just knock her out. It'll be easier.

And it would be. And he was sorely tempted. So very tempted to staunch the flow of tears he could see brimming in those alien eyes, or the scream that lay just at the edge of her throat. She beat against the window of the pod, fingers sliding along the walls, amber irises constricted to pinpricks, looking for all the world like the trapped animal she was. Like—

Dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

Was it the unfamiliar materials of his pod that frightened her? The blinking lights? The cold feel of metal around her…?

Muted gasps gave way to full out screams.

…or was it the tiny, enclosed space that caused her mounting panic?

He grit his teeth. Even closed the pod did not completely muffle her cries. More than cries, he corrected. These were frenzied wails that only seemed to escalate with each passing moment. It was just further proof that though she might have a tail, this girl was no Saiyan.

Fuck. He'd just knock her head against the pod a few times. Honestly one hit would be enough. That ought to keep her out for a while. He'd start screaming with her if she didn't shut the hell up—

He paused mid-step in the sand, eyes going wide in what was, for him, a rare moment of insight: She would welcome unconsciousness. Not just welcome it; she would relish it and the nothingness it provided. Would cling to it like a lifeline.

And she would learn nothing.

His hand dropped to his side. He would leave her to her panic. She could scream until her vocal cords tore, until her lungs collapsed, until her mind caved in on itself. She would learn. And maybe when he returned there would be at least a semblance of Saiyan.

O

There were no other Saiyans here.

He'd expected as much, but it didn't stop him from looking; from checking every waistline for a tail, from checking every face for tell tale Saiyan features- however minute- before killing. She was the lone gem among the ash, it seemed, but even still he found himself retracing his steps, examining the mangled bodies that lined the sand, fanning through the flies and scavengers with uncharacteristic care to study what was left of the bodies.

No tail.

Of course not, you fool! He could imagine the caustic voice of Vegeta scoffing at the very idea. He was being ridiculous; stupid even. What had he thought to find? A village of Saiyans? Ha! Finding surviving Saiyans had never been high on the metaphorical priority list, but now for the first time, Raditz found himself seriously contemplating it.

What if there were others…?

He'd been old enough before the planet's demise to remember the workings of Saiyan culture. Theirs had been a society of constant motion. Of productivity. Of soldiers. The idea of every Saiyan being on planet at the time of the disaster was, now that he thought about it, fairly ridiculous. He'd even go so far as to say impossible. Many would have been out on missions. The weaker infants, like his brother, would have been shipped off to other planets. It would've only taken an infant a few years with the help of a full moon to completely wipe a small planet…and subsequently deplete the food source. Predictably, those Saiyans would have languished and died, forgotten. And with all records destroyed along with the planet Vegeta, there was no way of knowing who was sent where in order to retrieve them.

Ah, but the others… the older warriors. Why had they never reported back? Nappa, he recalled, had even commented on it once or twice. Vegeta himself had not seemed to care.

"If they aren't strong enough to make it back on their own," he'd dismissed, "then they're useless." The subject had never been broached again.

And with only the three of them left…it was worth neither the effort nor resources it would take to try and locate any stragglers, anyway. But it had always been a given that any Saiyan survivors would naturally join them.

But the girl was not technically a 'survivor'. She was not technically even a Saiyan. In body or mind. 'Joining them' would be out of the question because she'd never be able to keep up-

He dropped the random corpse he'd picked up, spitting a mouthful of flesh and rotted blood to the ground. Damn. The suns had already burned most of the bodies into a tasteless, rubbery mess. He wiped a hand across his mouth, watching irritably as the flies latched back on to the corpse. No tail, either, he added as an afterthought.

No tails, but he found a tiny oasis and gorged himself on water and reptiles.

It was nearing midday as he made his way back to his pod.

The suns were just as hot and irritating as they'd been the previous day. More so, he suspected. The sweat was like an adhesive, gluing airborne particles of sand to his skin. His boots and armor and what felt like every orifice of his body were filled with the stuff, and he wanted nothing more than to leave and never come back, but somehow he found himself standing – simply standing- at the pods window.

She did not move.

Stupid, he thought. But at least she wasn't screaming. Anything was an improvement over that.

He watched her for a full minute.

Annoyance gave way to confusion. She wasn't…she wasn't doing anything. Head bowed, orange hair curled around her face, shoulders drooped, eyes hidden. The scene was startlingly familiar. He had seen this before—

Even when the door opened she did not respond, and the fact that she was so blatantly ignoring him made his jaw tick. He grabbed an ankle and flung her out and onto the sand.

This, at least, seemed to jar her. She watched him with dull, glassy eyes, pausing at the blood that stained his armor and skin. He smirked, crossing his arms and waiting for the inevitable breakdown, but her expression remained the same.

Interesting.

The linen shift she wore had ridden up to her thighs when he'd tossed her, but she did not seem to notice or care. She had long legs; too long to be considered normal, which had seemed a staple of the natives. The shape of her calves told him she did a fair bit of running, which he could appreciate. Right now those legs were bent at the knees and pulled close to her chest. Her tail lay limp, wilted in the sand beside her.

It was…it was not the sight he had expected to be greeted with. Better than crying, he thought again, but this blank apathy was undoubtedly worse.

She spoke then, in a low monotone devoid of any recognizable emotion. Behind the hoarseness and rasp from her screams, or perhaps because of it, her voice was deep and throaty and…definitely not the voice he would've pegged for this gawky girl. When that glassy stare did not waver, he realized she'd been speaking to him. And apparently waiting for a response.

He let out a barking laugh. Simply put, her dialect did not exist to the Organization. His pod's database had had no record of the language or even the people, so there'd been no rumination of words during his stasis here. Even so, it was not hard to guess what she'd said. The empty look in those bruised eyes said it all.

"They're all dead," he confirmed. And though she didn't understand the words, his accompanying nod was unmistakable.

She did not visibly react. She had already known, he suspected. Hell, if her initial reaction to him were any indication, she'd probably seen him in action. Welcome to life, sweetheart. She watched him a moment longer before simply turning away.

And that was it.

No screams. No tears. No attempts at attacking him. She simply turned away, presenting him with her back. Deliberately. The message was the same in any language.

It might have been funny. He might have laughed at her audacity—

Except that it wasn't funny. And it was made all the more incongruous because this…this girl, this little half-breed child, heseethed, had no idea at all what it was she was rejecting. And it made him furious. How dare—

Did she want to die? Who would willingly choose death? And how did she think she had a choice in the matter…?

He was at her before he even realized he'd taken a step. He spun her around and slapped her. She fell backwards in the sand, but not before a sandaled foot snapped towards his face, surprisingly fast. He caught it without even blinking, impressed despite himself. There was a Saiyan in there, dormant beneath layers of weakness and unconditioning…

Her hands flew to his face, fingers clawed, and he caught them just before they reached his eyes. He wrenched them behind her back, capturing them in one hand while simultaneously jerking her thrashing form to him until she straddled his knee. His other hand fisted greedily beneath her dress to find her tail.

There. Fingers closed around it. He hadn't realized he was breathing hard, or that his mouth was open and –

Perspiration made her skin salty. His mouth lay just at her shoulder, eyes staring behind her at the tail in his hands. Her one saving grace. And glaring weakness, for she had gone still in his arms, trembling, holding her breath. He could smell the taint of fear. Of him. The weakest among elites. The lone minority in a trio of minorities-

But in the end it had not been the Prince or the General who had found the boon of their race. It had been the grunt. It had been he, Raditz.

He reveled in it.

She spat something at him, still caught in his vice-like embrace, something sharp and unfriendly that would likely translate as an insult to his mother. He chuckled, then ran slow fingers up the length of her flailing tail. He had noticed the color the prior evening, had thought it just a product of the waning light of the sunset. But now, on the heated sands beneath glaring suns, he realized that what he'd seen before had not been discoloration due to lighting. It had not been a product of the shadows or his imagination. Her tail, her Saiyan tail, was orange.

It was yet another reminder that the alien girl he held was not the real thing.

O

My apologies! This chapter was NOT supposed to take this long. I've actually been trying to post it for the past several days, but for some reason kept getting an error message. (?) Not to mention my annoying (read: obsessive) habit of rewriting chapters about 50 times before posting. So yeah…

Thanks to all you out there who are reading, and especially those of you who took the time to review! xkitkatx, Adam, Kiki Myou, Seregunda, bleaktuesday, and fsalt. THANK YOU! Bleaktuesday (I tried to PM you but your PMs are disabled. Just wanted to thank you for such awesome and inspiring words!) Adam, I still have the original fic. It was only 5 chapters. There are a few minor spoilers in the original, but as soon as I get past them in this fic, I'll probably repost the other one just for kicks. (bad spelling and all!)