NB: A tiny fanfic piece for stupidoomdoodle's vegebul comic, affectionately referred to as the 'Friends AU', but also known as Girl Next Door (man the person who came up with that name is a GENIUS ;P ). If you're unfamiliar with it, CHECK IT OUT NOW: go to stupidoomdoodle's twitter or smackjeeves for the most amazing vegebul comics and other impossibly good drawings THAT WILL DESTROY YOUR SOUL. This fic won't make a lot of sense otherwise.

~~ox0xo~~

Girl Next Door

00? -Sacrifice-

Vegeta always expected he was going to die, young, and messily. You couldn't be in this business without knowing the reaper breathed down your neck, laughing at your frail attempts for self preservation, leaving you wondering when the rug would finally be pulled out from beneath you and all that remained of your memory was a passing mention at a bar. "Did you hear about Jim?" "Yeah, got his face blown off last Tuesday. Poor bastard." "Yeup. Well, never did much care for the guy." "Mm."

That was all your life amounted to in the shady corners of the underworld. No one was going to shed a tear for you, what would be the point? Everyone shared the same fate sooner or later, and if you were going to weep over some dumb fuck gang-banger you hardly trusted with a pack of smokes, then you were going to be weeping for yourself like all those sad fucks at the bar, tumbling down the bottom of a glass of the strongest drink your last paying gig could buy, flushing away your self-pity in a mouthful of 46% liquid absolution. But the smart ones didn't; there was no room to feel sorry for yourself in this line of work. That would get you killed faster than anything else.

And Vegeta was as smart as they came. With fatalistic nonchalance, he knew he was going to die, but not any time soon if he could help it, and not with any misgivings or self-pity. If he was going to kick the bucket, it would probably be on some impossible mission Frieza had in store for him when the boss finally got fed up of his arrogance and insubordination. Vegeta was somewhat surprised he'd made it this far, but he supposed his ability to dissociate from his victims and get results by the most violent means necessary was saving him from being the next bit of gossip passed around at the gang's local watering holes. "To Vegeta, the Prince of all Bastards. Glad it was him and not me." Yep, that's pretty much all he could hope to expect for in this life.

Until her.

She had breezed into his world, all blue hair and sultry eyes, long limbs and annoying, disarming smiles with her bright-as-fucking-can-be personality that set his teeth on edge and a vein in his temple throbbing. He couldn't get rid of her. She was pervasive, like lingering perfume, clouding his thoughts and leaving traces of herself in his mind even when she wasn't there. And god, she was so nice. And… fun. And pretty. Jesus Christ it was aggravating. And for some fucking reason that he would never understand, she seemed to take a liking to him. She worked her way into his life so subtly that he didn't realize until it was too late that she'd become as natural and expected in his routine as the self loathing he woke up with every morning, the same self loathing that was starting to wane as his thoughts turned more often to her than to some poor schmuck whose leg's he'd broken earlier in the week.

Hell, he was even starting to look forward to seeing her, making excuses to bump into her. What the shit was that about?!

And just when things were going well, just when he started to trust that maybe, just maybe Lady Luck had smiled upon him and granted him something good in his life for all the other short fucking straws he'd drawn, everything fell to shit. Typical.

Of course, it all came down to Frieza. Every. Fucking. Time.

Someone had ratted him out, Nappa no doubt. Frieza had him beaten, smacked around like he was wont to do because he could, because it amused him to watch his peons suffer and make them ask for more, but Vegeta just took the abuse silently, accustomed to pain. It didn't hurt, not really, but what did hurt was what Frieza told him, about her. Who she really was, what she was really up to. She was the opposition, the enemy. She'd used him. All the while he'd been honest with her, or as honest as he could be, she'd been fucking deceiving him. She'd made a fool of him, all that fucking time, pretending to be chummy, pretending to be interested…

That bitch.

Vegeta was done with it, done with them all, with her, with Frieza, with his useless dumb companions and this bloody, meaningless life he'd been enduring. He was over it all, it could all fucking burn for all he cared. He was going to show them, fuck them all over where it hurt the most, and then run off, get out of the game, and maybe enjoy a bit of freedom before he either got himself killed or someone came and did the job for him.

Well, that had been the plan for all of about half a day, until she did a one-fucking-eighty on him and invited him in to her hideout like he was some kind of… friend… and then proceeded to tell him everything. Everything. And then she asked him to join her fight.

Fuck her. FUCK. HER. That was so fucking unfair his mind boggled with the incongruity of it, that she would just throw all that trust and responsibility on him out of fucking nowhere, like he, he, was some white fucking knight, able to save them. What the fuck?! And fuck his heart for wanting to believe her again so easily, and fuck those stupid magic zombie balls, whatever they were supposed to be, and fuck-

"I did promise you a night with no talking, didn't I?"

And… and…

…Oh…. Fuck her…

Vegeta never thought he'd die with regrets. What did he have to regret? His life had been miserable. If he started regretting one thing, he'd have to regret his whole fucking life because the whole experience had been one giant shit show of bad from beginning to end. So he'd embraced the bad, became it, reveled in it. That's why he was so good at what he did, that's why Frieza kept him around and tolerated his other shortcomings.

But she'd seen through that, found some tiny molecule of himself still untainted, trapped away amongst layers of blood and abuse and immorality, and she'd pulled it out, treasured it, polished it… loved it.

And because of it, Vegeta now lay on the floor, bleeding out, counting his life in pained gasps and remaining seconds, full of regrets. He didn't regret his time leading up to her, as miserable as it had been, it's what had led him to meet her. But he did regret that they hadn't had more time together. That he couldn't have slept with her again, couldn't have made love to her instead of just fucking with his head filled with animosity, heartache and desire. He regretted that he couldn't have been more honest with her, or done all the stupid things with her he'd always sneered at other couples for doing. Fuck, death was making him sappy; who'd have thought?

But most of all, he regretted that after all their planning, he hadn't been able to kill Frieza. He'd fucked up, underestimated Frieza's strength, and everything had gone to hell just as it always did, and now she wasn't safe. He couldn't protect her, the one thing he actually gave a damn about protecting, but he was out for the count, permanently. He supposed he regretted that too, that in dying he wouldn't be able to save her, that he'd brought this on her, that she'd probably die because of it and he still wouldn't see her even then if what all those church freaks preached was true, because he and Bulma were destined for very different places in the afterlife.

Life was really fucking unfair sometimes. But at least it would only be unfair to him for a few more seconds… Maybe the Devil would take a liking to him, he couldn't be any worse than Frieza after all.

Vegeta closed his eyes, and though he coughed up red, he only saw blue.

And then he saw nothing.

~~ox0xo~~

AN: AND THEN BULMA GIVES HIM A DRAGONBALL AND HE LIVES, RIGHT DOOMS, RIGHT? RIGHT?! ANSWER ME YOU BITCH I mean I love you don't break my heart too much ;_;

I apologise for the roughness, I wrote this super fast and didn't have time to polish it well. Hopefully it's still readable.

And no, I'm not privy to any secret information, so this is totally not 'canon' in terms of Stupidoomdoodle's comic, but she requested fanfic, and this is what came out, take it for what you will ;)

If you like my writing, checkout my other vegebul fanfics on FFnet :) I also love comments/feedback, so please don't be shy :)

P.S. Dragonball and its characters belong to Akira Toriyama, and this AU idea is stupidoomdoodles'.