He was watching.

Bulma was no warrior, but she didn't need extraordinary senses to feel that particular heavy presence hovering just beyond sight. Trunks was almost asleep, curled up on his belly, sucking on the end of his long brown tail the way a human baby might suck on its thumb. He was barely three months old, and already he was consuming nearly five litres of milk a day. He couldn't walk or talk yet, but when he threw a tantrum (and that was often) he was capable of smashing everything around him. He was an extraordinary child in more ways than one.

She'd thought she was ready for anything, but she wasn't. Trunks nearly killed her several times before he was even born. Towards the end she spent most of her time in bed, moving less than the child inside her. She didn't dare risk natural childbirth, either, so Trunks was cut out of her, still asleep til the first gust of cold air hit him-

-then he screamed.

He nearly destroyed everyone's eardrums. Acting fast, remembering with sudden clarity an offhand remark Vegeta once made, Bulma seized her new son by the tail and snatched him from the doctor so that he was dangling upside down. And immediately the shriek became a muffled, much more manageable little wail.

Stupid monkeys, she thought, and found herself both laughing and crying at the same time.

Once he was born, the tension of the situation evaporated. He was a spunky, irascible child, and won over Bulma's mother and father quickly. Fortunately. For it was no easy task dealing with Trunks and keeping up with her work in Capsule Corp, and if not for her eternally sunny mother's assistance, Trunks would have destroyed the whole house multiple times.

"Saiyans!" she often found herself screaming in frustration as she tried to calm down a small child who had destroyed his own crib in a fury. "Goddamn stupid fucking Saiyans!"

And why did you fuck a Saiyan, then, Bulma? She demanded of herself in these exasperating moments. You thought he was hot and you have a damned soft spot for badasses. You couldn't resist the ultimate badass, stalking around your house in a skintight jumpsuit. You didn't think one fling would hurt anyone.

He's a Saiyan, dammit! Once was enough! When did he – or even Goku – ever miss a target?

And of course he wouldn't give a shit. Even Goku had treated the appearance of a son with a kind of nonchalant glee, as if Gohan was a new puppy. This one, the homicidal, genocidal, violent, unstable, intelligent, maniacal one – she'd be lucky if he didn't offhandedly decide to obliderate them all.

No, but that wasn't fair. If there was one thing she had noticed about Vegeta, it was that his violence was dictated by need. He killed because he was ordered to, because he wanted something from someone, because he had been pissed off. He was not his old master; he didn't kill simply because it was fun – although he enjoyed destruction, to be sure. Still, on Namek he had killed a whole village of Namekkians to get a Dragonball; he had killed several of Frieza's generals to protect his interests; but he hadn't killed Krillin or Gohan, and he had taken one look at her, dismissed her as unimportant, and left her alone.

She had to confess to herself now that he had rather intrigued her even then. It helped he was good looking in that odd way – built like a bullet, small and swept back, with a permanent rippling tension in his compact powerful body. It helped too that he had killed Zarbon right in front of her – the staggeringly handsome Zarbon who transformed into a staggeringly ugly monster, exploded into part of the landscape with one tremendous spine-tingling blast from Vegeta's palm. The expression on his face was memorable, the little satisfied smirk, the little cocky bastard.

It was Bulma's experimental nature which had doomed her. She had been with Yamcha for so long that it had simply started to bore her. He had once been a little dangerous and exotic; now he was just, well, good ol Yamcha. And she had of course watched Goku grow up; she had seen him as Oozaru and as a Super Saiyan; she had felt that amazing tingle go up her spine when he channelled and released energy in earth-shaking blasts, and it had always been in the back of her mind. What would it be like to fuck a Saiyan?

And then a Saiyan dropped out of the sky into her backyard. More importantly, it was a dangerous and exotic Saiyan, a Prince no less, and she had immediately shoved him into a shower and seen him, for the briefest of flashes, entirely naked. Stupid woman, she thought to herself often. How old do you need to grow to understand the concept of self-control?

"You can come in, you know," she said quietly as she gazed at Trunks.

At first nothing happened. Vegeta, like Goku, and to an extent Piccolo, had an energy signature – a ki radius – so powerful that even if they were just sitting around, people had a tendency to look over their shoulder. One didn't need honed senses to detect that something unusual was present.

That oppressive sense grew gradually stronger, and then quite suddenly he was there in the shadows, two glittering eyes and a flame of black hair. She hadn't seen him up close since he, well, since that moment. Despite the fact that she expected very little of him – and probably he of her, if he bothered to think of the issue at all – she felt a little tickle in her belly anyway. She had, for one extremely memorable moment, seized that crazy black brush of hair in her fists and cried out like an animal. She was familiar with Goku's unruly weird mane, each strand so thick it was like wire, impossible to bend in any other direction and resisting every blade including industrial garden shears. Vegeta's hair was even thicker, and although she had applied enough force to tear out a man's scalp, not a strand had fallen from his head.

It was only afterwards she realised she had rather stupidly put herself in danger of being crushed like an insect. Til now the wall against which they had propped themselves had two sizeable chunks in it, the shape of his fists. He had grabbed the sheet metal wall and not her body, and she didn't know whether it was a conscious choice, but it was the only thing that had saved her from paralysis and death.

She regarded the shadow just outside the window with the usual mixture of exasperation and fascination which the vicious Saiyan Prince always aroused in her. He gazed back at her silently. "Just get inside, will you?" she snapped irritably. "I don't like people hovering around me. Literally."

Still he didn't say a word. It had occurred to Bulma more that once that Vegeta had offhandedly killed anyone who had been remotely lippy to him. She had snarled and snapped at him frequently enough, in staggering disregard for her own life, and he had yet to raise a hand against her, confining himself to the same thing he often snapped at Goku: "Shut up."

Finally his feet landed on solid ground, and the hairs on the back of Bulma's neck settled down. So much power it was ridiculous, he and Goku and now Gohan too; so much latent energy contained in flesh and blood bodies. They could turn it down and hide it, but to mortals like Bulma it was still a subtle disquieting vibration hovering around them.

"So you're a Super Saiyan now," she said when he still made no remark.

He had been looking at Trunks; now he looked at her. His face was an expressionless mask, which was astonishing considering how maniacally gleeful he had been on the battlefield just that morning, enveloped in golden fire.

He hadn't saved her from crashing when the energy wave hit her transport module, but Bulma was not fazed by that, though the odd stranger who had saved her seemed unusually agitated. Firstly, she hadn't been expecting him to notice or care; secondly, they both knew perfectly well there was no shortage of people to help her. There had been no need for Vegeta to, well, betray himself, if he had been inclined to at all.

"Did you know you have a son?"

Finally he spoke. "I knew when I made landfall."

"Did you know when you left?"

"Yes, but I didn't think he would live anyway."

"Why not?"

It was hard to read Vegeta's expression when he was not in battle (the exact opposite of Goku), but she could have sworn he looked a little surprised. Finally he asked, with a tinge of exasperation, "Why did you keep it, earth woman?"

"Keep...? You mean the baby?"

"No, I meant the pimple on your chin. Yes, the goddamn baby."

His customary sarcasm didn't provoke her usual annoyance because she was so stunned by the question. "Why... why wouldn't I?"

"This conversation is going in a circle." He looked down at Trunks again. "You do realise this is the half-Saiyan bastard of an evil genocidal general? And the new Prince of a nearly-extinct race of violent bloodthirsty warriors?"

"Yes," she said, cutting right into his icy sneer. "I don't care."

He regarded her irritably. "Woman, do you understand what you are getting into? What are you going to do with him?"

"Raise him, of course. He's my son."

"You can't raise a Saiyan child. If Kakarot's brat is anything to go by, a half-Saiyan is even more difficult to handle. You can't feel his power level. I can." His teeth flashed in the dim light. "That is my son in every way."

"What's his power level?"

"Three thousand." The grin grew even more. "I was born at two and a half thousand, and Frieza was so afraid he made my father give me up to him."

"Lucky you."

"Shut up." Sudden rage in his intense black gaze. "Listen to me, for once. Kakarot doesn't know shit about his Saiyan heritage, otherwise he would never have allowed his woman to carry his brat. Saiyan children are violent and unpredictable. They have no control over their power. They need to be trained. Kakarot was lucky because he had the Namekkian to guide his son. You have no-one. You are only a weak Earthling. And before you tell me Kakarot's female did fine, this one is not Gohan."

"Is he stronger?"

"I don't know what Gohan's power level was at birth, but since his mother is still alive, it was probably lower than... than.. what's his name."

"Trunks, you asshole."

"Yes, whatever. What kind of stupid name is that?"

"It's a traditional name in my family, and don't you fucking complain, it's not like you're going to stick around anyway."

"True." Vegeta once again regarded his new son. Bulma studied his expression as much as she could in the darkness. He appeared to be appraising the child, his head tilted to the side. "I'm surprised you survived him."

"I almost didn't. But I have resources."

"Lucky you," he snapped back.

"I don't know why you're so worked up. Your mother did fine."

"My mother died, you idiot." The sharp words gave her a sudden jolt of terror. "There wasn't even a body to bury. I incinerated her and the crew. The room was still burning til my father came in and grabbed my tail."

"I remember you mentioning that. I grabbed Trunks by the tail too."

"That's why you're still alive. I'm glad somebody fucking listens to me."

"Believe it or not, I always listen to you. Even when you're screaming about Kakarot."

"Shut up." But it was said reflexively, almost absently. "When will the gravity room upgrade be finished?"

"It'll take a while. I ran the specs through and while it's possible for the power core to produce that level of pressure, the structure itself won't hold up to it. You'll just be standing in the middle of a big hole charging into the core of the earth."

"You have to stabilise the struts with a strong enough material of course."

"Of course nothing, Prince Smarty Pants. There isn't a material on earth which could withstand that level of pressure. I'll have to synthesize it and it'll take time."

"Here." Clunk – lying on the ground at her feet was a suit of his white Saiyan armour. "Use this."

"That's no use. I saw how easily it smashes. Everyone was wearing it on Namek. It was next to useless."

"Really, Miss Smarty Pants?" he parroted, folding his arms across what was now a truly formidable chest. "It hasn't occurred to you that this might be different from the suits you saw on Namek?"

Bulma stared at him. "How could it be different? Frieza's armies are gone. The war engineering units are no longer operational, are they? Who's left to synthesize battle suits?"

"I did, you stupid cunt."

"You?" she stared at him, goggle eyed. "You're not an engineer."

"No, I am a fucking Prince. I don't see how that makes me a fucking nitwit. You've been around bloody Kakarot too long." He pushed the suit with his toe. "It's almost infinitely elastic, like the old suits, and nearly indestructible. It adapts to the environment around it. It will hold up under the pressure as long as the increase is gradual, and will revert back to normal density when the pressure it turned off. Take it, use it, and build my goddamn training room before Kakarot fucking gets ahead of me again."

And then, all at once, he was gone.