thanks to everyone who reviewed or followed or favorited! i am going to follow your advice and continue this series of drabbles. this second chapter is a bit longer than the first. trunks hasn't made an appearance yet, but t promise you he will appear in the next chapter! much love, america

i do not own the the dragon ball series


She can screech like her mother too. Cursed genetics gave me a banshee daughter along with my banshee mate. The child is a day old and she has my wife up every other hour, her cries coming through a small device that my wife keeps on her nightstand. Like clockwork, the brat begins to whimper, waking me up. Once her whimpers become full wails, my mate stirs, unsteadily slipping out of bed and into her robe, before stumbling out the door to the next room where our child sleeps. Like the mornings before, when I rise from our bed, my wife's side is empty and I find her downstairs, nursing a large cup of tea.

I grunt as I walk into the kitchen and she simply gives me a tired smile before returning to the schematic she no doubt has been working on since the early hours. Worried but unwilling to admit it, I raid the refrigerator and first place a bowl of misoshiru into the microwave before putting a large dish of rice and yakizakana into the oven to heat up. The microwave beeps and I pull out the steaming bowl with my bare hands, before grabbing a napkin and walking over to place the food in front of my wife, whose eyelids are drooping as she lazily sketches something.

Her eyelids flutter as I place the bowl down gently, and then her giant eyes fixate on the soup. Hungrily, she grabs the bowl and drinks the soup, sighing and wiping her mouth with her sleeve when she is halfway through. I grimace at her table manners as I take my own plate of food to the table and place a napkin on my lap.

Her ki seems to have strengthened slightly as she takes another gulp of the soup and places the bowl down with a sigh. I lift my chopsticks to begin eating my rice, and I see her eyes watching me.

"Your daughter definitely has your appetite. I shouldn't be surprised, but it's been so long since Trunks was born that I forgot. I'm going to have to start pumping and I'll have to find the notebook where I wrote down how I made the fortified, protein-rich supplements for Trunks." As she analyzes her work, she chews her pen and knits her brow in concentration.

I reach over without thinking to ease her hand and the pen away from her mouth, and her sharp gaze meets mine. I nonchalantly gesture to her schematic and mutter, "You switched the wires on the right side." She narrows her eyes at me and I smirk, knowing she cannot stand it when my intellect trumps hers. Huffing, she erases that part of the drawing and inserts the correct corrections.

"What was that you said a moment ago about experimenting on my son with some type of supplement?" I ask after swallowing a bite of fish. She looks up at me with a glint in her eyes and a smirk on her lips.

"Vegeta darling, do you really think I would experiment on my own son?" She shrugs, "I gave it to Goku and Gohan before I fed it to Trunks. I mean, what was I supposed to do? I had just given birth to a half-Saiyan child and his rogue father had disappeared, leaving me with nothing to know about his race." She takes a thoughtful sip of tea. "Trunks was losing weight fast and the doctors didn't know what to do. I couldn't produce enough milk and Earth baby formula made him sick. I was at the end of my rope." She whispers the last part, looking down at her drink and not at me.
I clear my throat, uncomfortable. My mate has always been more than gracious with me, but she is never less than honest, and I feel the unwelcome curling of failure around my gut.

"Was the birth of Trunks… difficult?" I almost stumble on my words. Now it is me avoiding her gaze, as I look down at the table and cross my arms. I can sense her indecision.

"It was not as easy as planned." She provides vaguely, picking up her bowl and cup to place in the sink.

"Woman…" I growl as she walks past me. I hear her let out a breath, placing her items in the kitchen before returning to sit next to me at the table. She picks a cuticle and goes into full-medical mode.

"I was on bed rest for three weeks. I developed preeclampsia, which is a pregnancy condition that causes high blood pressure and can be fatal, early on, and Trunks had started to kick so hard that I would sometimes collapse. Additionally, he was early- well, for human terms he was early. In reality, the only person I knew who had any experience with Saiyan pregnancies was Chi Chi, but she delivered at nine months as expected. Meanwhile, I was six months pregnant and had been four centimeters dilated, which means I was in active labor, for two weeks. The doctors wanted to perform a C-sec…. Well, they wanted to cut Trunks out of me, but I was afraid to do that because of how unsure the doctors were about the pregnancy." She stops looking at her hands to look at me.

"I was in labor for 40 hours," she grimaces. Silence covers us for a handful of seconds.

"When I asked you why you wanted me to be here for Bra's birth, you said you wanted me here so I could have the experience as a father." I begin slowly.

"Which is true! You didn't have the chance with Trunks." She interjects.

"So why," I continue, "did you not inform how dangerous this pregnancy was to your health?" I look her directly in the eye. She places her soft, pale hand on my own.

"Hon, when you mentioned have another kid, I was ecstatic. In my opinion, we create incredibly intelligent, strong, and beautiful offspring, so why deny the world?" She smiles but her smile fades as she observes my severe look.

"In truth, I didn't want to scare you. I knew you were already freaked out as it was, and I didn't want to make it worse by causing you to worry about me." She says earnestly.

"That can't be helped." I mumble, picking up my plate to put in the sink as well. I clear my throat.

"I am going to train." I say to the wall and not to Bulma's face.

"Okay," I hear her clattering around to boil another pot of tea, "You'll be back tonight, right?" She inquires.

"Yes. Most likely after dinner." I answer, my back still to her, as I exit the room.

After a fifteen hour workout, I exit the gravity room freshly showered, a towel around my waist and neck. Years ago, Bulma insisted on installing a cleaning room into my training area, complaining that she 'refuses to have to smell you before I see you'. I had simply glared at her, increasingly annoyed at her presence- not because of her inherently obnoxious attitude, but because she had started to haunt me even in the confines of the gravity room. For years, all I would picture during my training was my end goal. For a while that goal was achieving immortality, but for my whole life the end goal was to achieve my birthright, Super Saiyan, and slay that tyrant, Frieza.

But suddenly, I couldn't picture that goal anymore. My thoughts were invaded by her, with her calculating touches and smiles and the smoke in her eyes when she shouted at me. And when I sensed that she was carrying my child, when I felt the first beat of Trunk's heart, his body already stronger than I had been as a teenager, I fled.

How ironic it is that now my training is fueled by images of my mate and children. All I can think of as I push the gravity higher and higher is my family.

Still mulling over my thoughts, I enter the dark room I share with Bulma and grab a pair of boxers, throwing my towel into the hamper. As I crawl into bed, the wailing from that small device begins again, and I hear my woman begin to stir. She throws her legs over the side of the bed, but I grab her arm before she sits up fully.

"Woman, you need to get some sleep." I say gruffly, observing her sagging form.

"No, I have," she yawns, "to go and feed… Bra," she yawns again.

I reach over to put my arm around her waist and pull her body against mine. She wriggles a bit, resisting, but I kiss her neck right above her mating mark, and whisper, "I'll take care of the brat. You go to sleep." She groans and murmurs something intelligible as I throw back my covers, grab a shirt and exit the room.

In my mind I see Frieza and Zarbon laughing at me, the poor monkey prince demoted to a lowly nursemaid, but I easily shove the images away. Every year here on Earth, it becomes easier and easier to quiet the demons who once terrorized me.

Opening the door to my daughter's room, I see her thrashing and I wince as her screaming meets my sensitive ears. Quietly, I walk to her crib and reach in to pick her up. Patting her on the back, her cries become silent as I make my way to the kitchen. As I rummage through the fridge, the child pulls at my hair. I scowl. The woman has been feeding my child only milk, as if Eschalot is fully human. I scoff. For a genius, Bulma can be brainless sometimes.
I pull out a piece of meat, and bite a tiny piece off before spitting it into my hand. No longer crying, the child watches me with the same piercing eyes as her mother. If I couldn't feel this kid's blasted ki, I'd swear the cursed woman cloned herself.

But as I feed Eschalot the meat piece by piece, I know her paternity is unquestionable. She even eats like a true Saiyan. Finally satiated, the little female curls herself into my neck, her chubby hands clutching to my shirt. Tiredly, I make it back to her room and place her in her crib, partially relieved to not feel her presence so close to me, vulnerable and in need of protection. Scoffing at myself, I shut her door gently and make it back to my room.

Is this fatherhood? Hmm, I don't know why everyone makes such a big deal about it.


i think next chapter will center around Trunks observing how his dad is acting around the new baby, and wondering why there aren't any pictures of himself with his dad when he was a baby. stay tuned and tell me what you think of that idea :) also, i had them eat a traditional Japanese breakfast in this chapter because i wanted to give a nod to the roots of this series.