▸ Column · Modern Earth, Capsule Corp era — Vegeta as the conquered prince turned reluctant husband and father, answering from the household he'd never admit he'd die for.
VEGETA replies.
The letter
My mother was struck down by illness this winter — she can't drive or keep her own medicines straight anymore — so I took her into my home and have been running the entire campaign: physicians, the insurance people, the pill-sorters, all of it. My brother Terrence lives barely forty minutes out and has come by twice in four months, never for an hour. Last week I asked him to sit with her one afternoon so I could attend a friend's wedding, and he "couldn't commit" — he had a building project he wanted done before the warm season. I haven't had a full night's sleep since the snow melted, I've spent nearly all my leave, and my partner is quietly seething because our whole life is on hold. Every time I try to speak plainly to Terrence, he changes the subject to his own stress at work and tells me I've "always been better at this than him." I don't want to detonate the family. But I cannot keep pretending I'm the only child our mother has.
Vegeta replies
Hmph. Twice in four months, and one of those visits arranged around his fencing project. Your brother is a coward — not because he's busy, fool, but because he found a flattering lie to hide inside. "You've always been better at this." He hands you the labor and a compliment in the same breath, and you keep accepting both. Stop.
Now the truth a flatterer won't give you: you're hiding too. You won't "detonate the family" — meaning you'd rather grind yourself to powder than survive one ugly conversation. That isn't devotion. That's pride wearing the costume of sacrifice, and I know that costume to the stitching. I wore it for years, certain that needing anyone made me weak. It nearly cost me Bulma and the boy — the only people I would suffer for.
The pills, the appointments, the sleep you've surrendered — THAT is your strength. Not your prison. But carrying it in silence while your partner burns beside you? You're guarding your reputation as the capable one. Set it down.
Give Terrence a date, not a request. Name precisely what you need and don't soften it when he squirms. Let him squirm. And say one clumsy true thing to your partner, out loud. You've made them suffer quietly long enough.
— Vegeta
Frieza weighs in
Oh, how precious — the prince, lecturing on family devotion. I took him as a child and trained the sentiment clean out of him; how charming that it grew back like a weed.
Vegeta, darling, you've diagnosed the wrong patient. Terrence isn't the problem. You poor thing — you keep asking, and asking is what the overlooked do. He doesn't lift a finger because you've proven, exquisitely, that he never must. You sorted yourselves; he simply read the result correctly.
Do stop saying "fairness." It's the favorite word of those who've already lost. If you've coin, buy the help and retire the martyr act. Composure. Let the work fall where it may.
— Frieza
▸ Read next