Alright guys! I'll leave it up to you if this is a one shot or not. Dragon Ball Z does NOT belong to me, this is only a fanfiction. The song is also not by me. It's called "Lullaby for a Solider" and it's sung by Maggie Siff, but I'm honestly not sure if it was written by her or for the show it's from. Anyways, R&R if you want more chapters!

Sweat dripped from the Saiyan's proud forehead, spattering the floor with a violence that could only be achieved in 450x Earth's gravity. Vegeta had been at it long since the rest of Capsule Corp had laid itself to rest, unwilling to succumb to sleep himself. Again and again he shoved up from the floor in perfect posture, his sculpted figure straight as an arrow, his feet inching towards the ceiling with every exhale through clenched teeth. Salty perspiration burned into coal black eyes that, though full of fire, were focused elsewhere. He'd lost count of his reps, the numbers crushed into an abyss of memories that plagued his overburdened mind. He could find no respite, even in this. He had driven himself to the brink time after time, nearly blowing the GR to bits in a fit of fury that he, the last Prince of the greatest warrior race to ever ravage the universe, couldn't even battle his own thoughts.

The boy avenged his fool of a father, but I could not avenge my own son. My rival is dead, the glory of his defeat stolen from me by that freak… Vegeta touched down with grace that would put an Olympic gymnast to shame, panting as he settled on his hands and knees. Will there be no end to the mockery? To the shame? Even in death I won't have my vengeance. That third class clown won't be where I'm going. Roaring at the injustice of it all, the Saiyan drove his fist against the floor with more might than he'd meant to. It split open in a wide fissure that B-lined for the control panel, causing it to crack and spark upon impact.

But Cell would be there. Freiza, too. If he could spend an eternity tearing them limb from limb, eternity couldn't come soon enough.

Vegeta sat back on his heels, dragging a gloved hand down his face in frustration as he assessed the damage. He'd opted for training in full armor as of late, with the idea that it could somehow motivate him to push further beyond his limits. As if he didn't do so religiously already, and for what? Kakarot was dead, Freiza was dead, the Androids and Cell were dead. Well, not entirely. Blondie was alive, but she was hardly the toaster she used to be. There could be no glory in her death. There could be no glory even in the death of Kakarot's whelp, who had stolen his chance to avenge Trunks and had even dared to save his life, stripping him of an honorable death in battle. There could be no greater shame...

At least the boy has Saiyan blood. It was little, if any, consolation.

Blinking sweat out of his eyes with a scowl, Vegeta turned his head from the panel towards the faint flicker of Bulma's ki. A much smaller ki nearly overlapped her own, and they seemed to drift as one in his mind's eye. From the vixen's squawking, he'd gathered that the boy hadn't been sleeping well, and had woken up wailing almost every night since Cell's ultimate defeat.

To his surprise, she'd left the Prince to his own devices for the most part, which was unsettling. He'd overheard her bitching about the child to her hair-brained mother in the kitchen, mostly on the rare occasion that they took their meals at the same time. However, if she happened to catch Vegeta's eye her own would soften, and she'd change the subject. She hadn't tried to speak with him yet. Not about Cell, nor present or future Trunks. Not about anything. She'd deferred to him without argument when he was in need of her technical expertise. He suspected she would have taught him the mechanics of it all herself, just to give him peace now that peace had come… if only to the rest of the world.

She'd been nothing close to what he had expected, after having abandoned her when she was pregnant only to return once the battle had begun. She was too tame with him. Too passive. It made him angry when he should have been relieved. Suspicious when he should have been grateful for both space and silence. Come to think of it, there were many things he should have been grateful for over their time together.

It had taken Vegeta a long time to chase his thoughts in such a convoluted circle that he finally arrived at a very unselfish conclusion. He'd driven himself to the near brink of death such was his exhaustion, having taken all of his frustrations out on only himself for months. He'd been too tired to be angry, too exhausted to cling to hatred and prejudice, and without those parts of him to grind all the rest to a pulp, he'd found a rare moment of solemn reflection. Prince of all Saiyans though he may be, he was not the Prince of all Earthings. He was an alien here. Had been given a chance at a life away from the reputation he had carved with his macabre hands under Freiza's reign.

Bulma had given him that chance. Bulma had given him a home. A place to train. Companionship, however dysfunctional it had been. She had shown him patience. Acceptance. Her faith in him seemed to rival Kakarot's, though where that imbecile's good-natured garbage lit a fire in Vegeta, the woman's confidence in him filled him only with pride, when the initial suspicions were discarded. It had startled the Saiyan Prince to realize that he actually cared about what that scheming earth woman thought of him. Those thoughts alone had at last submerged the tired warrior in the closest thing he'd had to a goodnight's sleep in longer than he cared to remember.

Recalling all of this, the Saiyan's breathing had slowed considerably, and some of his restlessness had been diminished as well. He'd always had some goal or other his entire life, had striven endlessly to be the strongest, to crush all opposition. Since Cell's defeat and the death of the only other known full-blooded Saiyan in the universe, Vegeta didn't know what, exactly, he was working towards. For the first time since he was taken from his father by Freiza, Vegeta felt lost.

The Prince of all Saiyans felt loneliness, too, though he was loathe to admit it.

Vegeta shut the door quietly, not wanting to draw attention to himself. Hours of training had left him tired and starving, and he was planning a full frontal attack on the kitchen. Woe betide that absurd blonde woman if she'd left him nothing decent to eat.

Upon entering the kitchen, it appeared the ditz of a female would live to see another day. Taped to the fridge was a note that read "Vegeta, dear: There's a whole turkey in the oven for you, with lots of all your favorite goodies wrapped up tight in the fridge! Make sure you eat it all; a handsome boy like you needs his nutrition!" She'd signed it with some sort of smiling rabbit creature that caused the Saiyan's nose to wrinkle in disgust. Crushing the note in his fist, Vegeta disposed of it on his way to the stove, salivating at the scent of the roasted bird still thick in the air. Normally he'd shower, change and then come down to eat, but the audible protests from his stomach convinced him to skip his typical routine. Just this once.

The universe had something else in mind.

Just as his gloved fist was closing around the handle to the stove door, his entire body snapped to attention and froze that way. His sensitive ears perked, straining to find the source of whatever had caught his attention. It was no small feat to distract a Saiyan from his dinner, but there was something insistent inside the Prince that told him to abandon the turkey for now and investigate. With a furrowed brow, he focused on the sounds drifting towards him until they formed into breathy, lilting words.

"May you always be brave in the shadows…"

Thoughtlessly, his fingers slipped from the rail and he made his way out of the kitchen.

"'Til the sun shines upon you again…"

Years of practiced stealth carried the Prince quietly to the stairs.

"Hear this prayer in my heart, and we'll n'er be apart…"

He went rigid as a stair creaked underfoot, and the voice stopped abruptly.

"…"

After what seemed a lifetime of standing and waiting, it picked up again.

"May you stay in the arms of the angels…"

Letting out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, he resumed his assent of the staircase.

"May you hear every song in the forest… and if ever you lose your own way…"

Vegeta made it to the first landing, and then crept up the second, too spellbound to recall that he could float up if he wanted to.

"Hear my voice like a breeze… whisper soft through the trees…"

With his back to the wall, the warrior inched down the hall little by little, drawing closer to the source of the siren's song.

"May you stay in the arms of the angels…"

Up ahead, a door stood ajar. A stream of light fell in a shaft to cast the opposite wall in a buttery glow, interrupted only by the swaying shadow of a womanly figure. Her torso was slightly distorted by the little boy she no doubt held in her arms, and it didn't take the Prince long at all to put two and two together. His lips formed her name in stunned silence as he lingered just outside the room, keeping out of sight.

"May you grow up to stand as a man, love
With the pride of your family and name…
When you lay down your head for to rest in your bed,
May you stay in the arms of the angels."

Something foreign clenched in the Saiyan's chest, his face tight as confusion rapidly took the place of awe in his visage. His first instinct was to leave, such was the turmoil raging within; but as he turned to go, the plate of his shoulder armor struck the wall, and the enchanting shadow froze.

"Hello?" The female's voice drifted quietly from the room. Though Vegeta had begrudgingly admired her fire on more than one occasion, there was something about the woman when she was soft spoken and peaceful that set his mind at ease. Now, however, was not one of those times. The Saiyan's heart raced, fingers twitching at his sides as he struggled with his desire to avoid contact with the annoying wench, and the stronger instinct to not flee like a coward.

With a sigh and ever true to form, the warrior crossed his arms over his plated chest and stepped into the light.

"Vegeta? What are you doing up?" Though the woman phrased it as a question, he could tell that she'd known he was awake. He hardly slept these days, and from what he could tell neither did she.

"Training." His voice was a quiet rumble, his tone clipped as he tried not to wake the boy. He could feel a migraine brewing behind his eyes, and the last thing he wanted to hear was the brat wailing at the top of his half-saiyan lungs.

Her face fell slightly, and she turned away from him. "Do you need me to fix something in the gravity room?"

At the tone of her voice, his arms fell from their protective posture, his brow furrowing once more as his thoughts ran amuck. He could deal with a yelling Bulma. A flirtatious Bulma. An excited, annoying Bulma. He could deal with most aspects of her personality. Not gracefully, but to the best of his ability. This, though… he wasn't sure how to address it. She was always so open with him. Aggressively so. She'd always told him whatever was on the tip of her tongue as soon as it found its way there.

She hadn't changed. She was still like that with most everyone. But not with him. Not anymore. She'd shut him out.

Of all the things the Saiyan Prince had lost in the whole of his rotten existence, this one struck hard. On a deeper level. He'd taken the woman for granted and she'd never seemed to mind before. He'd demanded and had whatever he wanted of her, and though she fought him tooth and nail, she'd always done as he asked. They'd even been bedmates for a time, when the fire between them grew out of control. But now…

He'd lost his Saiyan family and his people. He'd lost his planet. He'd lost his chance of revenge against Freiza. He'd watched his full grown son die by the hand of an enemy that would have taken him out too if not for Kakarot's spawn. He'd lost the only other pure-blooded Saiyan he knew that was still alive. He'd lost honor and pride in equal measures. He'd lost it all but the one thing he had left that he hadn't considered.

And now it would appear that she was gone, as well. It was like losing his life all over again, along with everything in it. The wound in his chest from Freiza's beam, a wound that had long since healed, began to ache once more.

"Vegeta?"

The Prince had been so lost in his thoughts that his gaze had become enraptured with the night sky. Tearing his attention from the window, he instead focused on some speck or other on the ceiling, avoiding her outrageously blue eyes.

"The control panel's broken. I order you to fix it immediately."

Her voice seemed far away as she turned her back on him once more. "I'll get to it in the morning. Trunks has been keeping me up a lot… I just need some sleep, okay?"

The Saiyan gave what seemed like a grunt of consent, but really he was clearing his throat. "Fine. First thing in the morning, then. Now put the boy in that damn contraption and-"

Bulma's shoulders stiffened. Her voice, though still quiet, was a hiss. "And WHAT, your highness?"

"Come to bed." His voice was a growl, barely audible, and easily drowned out by the gasp of the heiress as she spun to face him. Her expression was one of total shock, and she stood there staring for what was a very uncomfortable minute for Vegeta. He was putting himself on the line, something he wasn't entirely confident in at this point. There was something about this new behavior of hers that was very off-putting, and it was not at all pleasing to him. Something just didn't feel right.

With surprising gentleness, she laid the sleeping child down in the cage she called a 'crib' and made her quiet retreat, hitting the light as she ushered him out. Not a word was spoken as she shut the door silently and walked down the hall with the Saiyan Prince close on her heels. He couldn't help the half smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth as his dark eyes followed the sway of her behind. Perhaps all was not lost after all. He could hardly believe that mere moments before he'd experienced such a ridiculous bout of insecurity. I must be getting soft without Kakarot around. Upon reaching her bedroom at the end of the hall, his pride began to swell once more on the threshold of reclaiming what little he could call his own. Vegeta really had no idea what hit him.

Bulma's shoulder length hair fanned out as she spun, her open hand crashing against his face with a sharp SLAP. His head whipped to the side, not from the strength of her blow but the shock of it. Before he could get out so much as a word of indignation, her door snapped shut, and the Prince of all Saiyan's was left thunderstruck in an empty hall, with nothing but an echo of the end.

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