Bulma had spent the entire night running through the crowds of the Bridgetown market. Tempted to stop at one of the countless food stalls lining either side of the street that she had passed along the way, she tried to close her mind to the pang of hunger cramping her slightly rotund and previously growling stomach as she kept up her steady jog along the road. She would not eat until she had reached her destination. She could not stop until they were safe . . . from him.
Vegeta walked nonchalantly through the gates of Bridgetown market in the direction of Bulma's flight. He had followed her scent easily up until this point. But with a mind preoccupied with the shock of the news he had received an hour earlier, together with the assaulting combination of the food and human smells of the market place, he had lost his concentration for now. Deciding to stop at one of the stalls where he had spotted barbequed, rotisserie chicken for sale, he observed the crowds milling around him, sniffing the air casually. Her scent was still there, strong again in his mind focused now with the promise of food. He was confused by the fear he detected in it. Confused by so much of what had transgressed in the last couple of days. Vegeta had known that Bulma had been keeping something from him. Even though her eyes had always been wary in his presence, in the last couple of days they had been completely guarded and shuttered. She hardly spoke with him, even when he tried to goad her into an argument, in fact, she had been downright avoiding him for a while now and he had no idea why.
Taking a chicken thigh wrapped in foil, he took time to pay the stall manager before tearing into it. He nearly choked on the giant harrumph that sounded next to him.
"Can you believe the nerve of that blue-haired imbecile, Margie? She nearly knocked the right tit completely off me chest, didn't she? Didn't even bother to apologized either, she didn't."
The Margie in question noticed that what had been said had caught Vegeta's attention. She offered him a friendly smile, and leaned in to whisper conspiringly,
"Don't worry about her love. The girl that bumped into her was a little waif of a thing. She couldn't really have done that much damage to her . . . well you know. Anyways, that happened over half an hour ago, I don't know why Ms. Martha here can't get over it." She frowned, but then her face softened into reflection. "I wonder who that girl was though. She was such a tiny thing, tearing through the market like she was, as though the devil he self were behind her. She looked absolutely terrified and about three months along no less. I wonder who she was."
"Marge, let's go now please, and why you are telling a stranger all of me business for I don't even know." The two older ladies moved off. "And who cares about who she was anyway . . ."
Vegeta finished up his chicken and wiped the excess sauce from around his mouth and off his fingers with a napkin. Nodding his thanks to the stall-keeper, he proceeded along the road, following the slightly diminished scent of Bulma, his mind once again preoccupied with what he had just heard. If he had any doubts in his mind that Bulma was afraid of him, they were definitely gone now. The only question was,
Why is she so afraid of me after all this time; after what had happened between them?
He hadn't lifted a finger to her once, even though he terrorized her with empty threats often enough, just for the hell of it. He knew she didn't trust him, but he would have sworn up until a couple of hours ago, that she had gotten over her initial fear of him. Now, he wasn't sure about any of it. He wasn't sure about anything. He had to find her.
Bulma ran up the avenue to her old house in Birds River. She knew he was coming and that he would find her, but she could think of no other place to go. She was banking on shutting up the house from roof to floor, and lying quietly until she felt it was safe to leave. Maybe he wouldn't find her there after all. Maybe he would give up. She snorted at her fanciful thoughts. She had never known that man to give up on anything in the last three years he had been living with her. Not once. If he wanted her, and she had no doubt in her mind that he did, he would go to no uncertain lengths to get exactly what he wanted.
Vegeta swung into Bird's River no less than fifteen minutes after Bulma had arrived at her house. In fact even as he walked up the gap, she was pulling the drapes in place over tightly shut windows, and double checking the bolts on each door. I might as well just stand in the middle of the road for all the good these locks will do to protect me from the likes of Vegeta, she thought miserably. Just as she stood back to admired her handy work, closing her eyes and praying feverishly that he just not come for her, she heard footsteps up the drive way. Nearly swooning at the sight of a flame-haired silhouette, she grasped the banister as tears started streaming down her cheeks. No.
Vegeta checked himself at the doorway, almost saddened by what he heard on the other side. Muffled tears, panicked breathing and a heartbeat so loud and erratic he was worried for its owner. She knew he was there, and was nearly having palpitations because of it. He heard her trying her best to sneak quietly into one of the back room. He considered just breaking in, but he didn't was to frighten her into doing something rash. So he did the most polite thing he had ever done in his entire life - he knocked on the door.
Go away . . . go away . . . go away, Bulma chanted the mantra over and over again in her head. But the knocking wouldn't go away, and she knew neither would the knocker. Sitting on the bed in the back bedroom of the silent house, she heard Vegeta quietly call her name. She knew she had to go to him. She could barely manage to make herself move, frozen as she was by fear that even to her seemed irrational, but that she was also helpless to not feel. She forced herself out of her mind-numbing paralysis and slowly made her way to the front door. Steadying herself against the banister yet again, she reached reluctantly for the bolts that kept the door shut.
Vegeta heard Bulma of the other side of the door, felt her trembling to unlock the bolts and felt sorry for her. The door now slightly ajar, he waited for the briefest of moments before entering in.
Bulma was pressed up again the banister. One hand pushing tears and stray hair away from her face, the other was wrapped protectively around her middle. Vegeta walked up to her until they were less than an inch apart.
"Please don't," Bulma whispered flinchingly, as he reached out for her. His hands fell back to his sides.
"Don't what?" he asked, perplexity making his voice harder than he intended it. Bulma flinched again, her arm tightening even more around her stomach.
"Why didn't you tell me?" He asked her, his eyes purposefully vacant and empty. Bulma glanced up into his eyes, searching for something to give her reprieve from the god-awful fears eating away at her soul. She noticed the inflection that softened his voice, noticed even more the fact that he hadn't continued to reach for her when she had asked him not to, and the fact that he hadn't made moves to harm her or their baby yet.
"I . . . I thought . . . I thought it . . . wouldn't have been wanted," she said softly, hanging her head for a brief moment, before lifting it back up. She wanted to push away some emotion almost akin to pain she saw in his eyes as she had her own tears, but she would be damned in she took her eyes off him for a second, or removed her hand from her stomach, as though a lone human arm could stop the Saiyan-jin prince from taking their lives if he wanted to. His raised chi alone would obliterate the house, half the neighborhood, her and their child in a matter of seconds if he chose. She didn't let herself think about it.
Vegeta was baffled at the fear emanating from Bulma. It was damn near palpable and driving him up a wall because he couldn't think of what he had done to cause it or what he could do to make it go away.
I thought it . . . wouldn't have been wanted. How could she have worked herself up to the point of running away thinking something that couldn't have been more wrong? She was scared shitless that he had come to kill their baby, a thought Vegeta would have found amusing if it didn't hurt so much. He never once let on how he felt about her. As far as he knew she thought that all they had done was fuck, and even though it was nothing short of wonderful experience in its own right, it appeared, for all intents and purposes, devoid of any of the sentimentality that human women seemed to believe go hand in hand with the act. She wouldn't have wanted sentimentality from what she perceived as evil alien vermin anyway. She couldn't care for him.
"Why?" he asked, taking a step back, and folding his arms across his chest.
Bulma looked surprised at the question, and clenched her fists wishing he would just get on with the murder of his offspring already. Waiting for such a cruel inevitability was much more than she could take.
"Because it is half human being, Vegeta. Your perfect, pure-bred Saiyan-jin pedigree has been tainted by my own inferior bloodline within this child." She lifted her head proudly under the weight of how much her own words were killing her inside. She had never told him how she felt. Figured he wouldn't be interested, that he would have laughed in her face or discarded of her with the same practiced indifference and scorn he faced the world. He didn't care for her.
Vegeta slowly raised his hands. Bulma frantically tried to back away into the banister that blocked her path. He was captivated by the strength of the stare she fixed on him, daring him to do the unthinkable. She glanced once at his raised hand, and said in a much stronger voice than before, "Vegeta, don't."
The hand came down again, softly resting against her face. Bulma pulled away from the gesture without thinking about what it could mean. She wanted him to go, to leave her in peace to raise their baby. Vegeta withdrew his hand from the air in which it now hung empty. He took several steps backward, ignoring the pent up breath of relief that Bulma released. He contemplated allowing his guard to drop, allowing her to see what he really felt for both her and their child, but decided against it, uttering a quiet, "You are wrong Bulma", before turning towards the door.
Bulma was shocked that he was just going to leave like that. She didn't know what to make of it. She didn't understand it at all.
"Vegeta wait!" she blurted out, closing her eyes against all the voices inside her head calling her every kind of fool in the book.
Forgetting to deaden his eyes, he turned to look at her, and she saw it all in his gaze. She saw sadness, regret and helplessness because of what she thought of him, of what she thought he had intended to do. But she also saw he understood and knew that he didn't blame her for her fears. He was hopeless and defeated because he didn't know how to make her unafraid, how to reach out and just say what he was feeling. She saw his longing for their son, a child he had resigned himself to thinking was never to be had. And she saw his love for her, just beneath the surface of it all.
"Vegeta," she said again, walking over to him, as if under the hypnosis of her enlightenment. She grasped his limp hand into hers, and bravely, gently placed it on her stomach. She looked up into his eyes almost wild with the chaos of his emotions. "I'm sorry."
He wrapped his free arm around her torso, drawing her to him. "As am I," he said softly. Bulma enfolded as much of his frame as she could with her small arms. Enveloped in his warmth, she felt all her previous fears being allayed, diminished and swept away.
"I love you Vegeta," she said boldly, knowing he wouldn't say it back, but unable to resist the movement within her to utter the truth of those words.
Vegeta pulled away from her embrace. I love you also, he mouthed. Bulma cried as that mouth enclosed her with a kiss that left her reeling. Surrounded by the overwhelming sense that everything was going to be alright, she smirked and leaned in for a kiss that left her stumbling under the weight of a now weak-kneed Vegeta.