Becoming a Family
Chapter One: Child Minding
Disclaimer: Characters and premise belong to Akira Toriyama, I'm just borrowing them for a bit of non-profit fun.
"Woman, your machine is broken!" Vegeta shouted into the intercom.
A few moments later a harassed-looking Bulma appeared on the vid-screen, she was carrying Trunks. "Look Trunks, it's your daddy," she cooed at the boy.
"Da!" Trunks exclaimed in agreement.
"Yes, he is," Bulma cooed. "And he's just like you. He thinks I should drop everything I'm doing to pay attention to him just like you do! Isn't that right Trunksie?"
"Woman, if you're going to try to insult me do it directly, not through the brat," Vegeta stated.
A sly smile crossed Bulma's face then she looked up from Trunks to meet Vegeta's eyes. "Well it just so happens that Trunks and I are the only ones home right now. And he's been fussy all day so if you want anything from me you're going to have to be willing to deal. Specifically I need a few hours to finish my project. So if you will watch Trunks while I finish my work and while I fix your GR it'll get fixed today. If not you'll just have to wait."
Vegeta considered the deal. He frequently watched Trunks, from a distance while someone else watched him from close up. "What does this 'watching' entail?" he asked.
Bulma's eyes sparkled evilly. "The whole nine-yards," she said. "If he cries you deal with it. You feed him when he gets hungry. You change his diaper if he smells bad. You deal with it if he screams bloody murder if he's not the center of your attention every second of the day."
"I'm not changing diapers," Vegeta declared.
"Done!" Bulma exclaimed. "You can come get me if he needs changed; otherwise you're on your own for the afternoon. Meet me in Trunks' room as soon as you've showered."
Vegeta gave Bulma a dark look, he knew that he'd been had. Still, if the situation got too annoying he was certain the woman would coming running to deal with her brat as soon as he called. After all, he was infamous across the galaxy for the destruction of countless worlds, who in their right mind left someone like him in charge of a small child?
Vegeta got cleaned up then headed upstairs. As soon as Bulma saw Vegeta she smiled, waved and slipped out of the room leaving Vegeta alone with his son. "Have fun," she called back to him.
"Hn." Vegeta said.
"Da! Da! Da!" Trunks chanted demandingly as he stretched his pudgy little arms through the bars of his playpen.
Vegeta crossed his arms and glared down at the boy. After a few minutes Trunk's features drew into a scowl. He glared right back at his father. When that didn't work Trunks threw back his head and wailed. He stretched his hands up to his father demanding that he be picked up and comforted. Unlike every other adult in Trunks' life Vegeta did not give in to his cries.
Vegeta gave the playpen a distasteful look. "I can see why you don't like being in a cage," he commented. "But only a fool or a weakling whines about his circumstances instead of trying to change them."
Trunks stopped wailing at the sound of his father's deep, gravely voice. He stared up at man as if giving Vegeta a chance to explain himself.
Vegeta glanced toward the door to make sure his actions were unobserved then he knelt beside the playpen and pushed lightly against one of the plastic bars. The material groaned in protest then gave way.
Trunk looked at the new gap in his playpen with fascination then gave his father a worshipful look. He waited for Vegeta to finish the job of releasing him from his confinement.
Vegeta snorted. "I told you brat: If you want something, get it for yourself."
Whether or not Trunks understood his father's words was debatable but after a few minutes he grabbed the bar next to the one Vegeta had broken and shook it. He glanced toward Vegeta hopefully.
Vegeta stood up and crossed his arms.
Trunks huffed then grabbed the bar with both small hands and started pushing. After a few minutes Saiyan strength won out over human construction and the bar broke. Trunks crawled through the gap at lightening speed; straight across the room to his father.
Vegeta went unnaturally still the moment his tiny son latched on to his leg. When he glanced down at the boy he saw a golden skinned child with green hair, a child no older than his son.
Trunk tugged on Vegeta's pant leg. "Up!" he demanded.
Vegeta didn't move, he didn't even breath. When the alien child looked up at him he wasn't at all surprised to see that the golden skinned child's skull was caved in, after all he'd inflicted that wound.
Trunks laboriously pulled himself to his feet using Vegeta's leg for balance. "Up!" he repeated. "Up Da!"
Vegeta blinked and when he looked back the child was his son once again. He remained frozen, irrationally he wondered if the wounds would reappear on Trunks the moment he touched the boy. The other child had been looking for his parents, trustingly he'd come up to Vegeta and tugged at his clothing to get his attention, and Vegeta had killed him... over ten years ago.
Trunks scowled. He reached up a far as he could and grabbed a handful of fabric then tried to climb up into Vegeta's arms. While his physical strength was adequate for the task of lifting his slight body weight Trunks lacked the co-ordination to climb very far. A few seconds later he thudded back to the floor, his diaper absorbed most of the impact but the betrayal of not being caught started him wailing again.
Vegeta took advantage of the moment to move out of Trunks' reach. "You're out of the cage; what more do you want boy?" Vegeta demanded.
Trunk snatched up his nearest toy and hurled it at his father.
Vegeta snatched it out of the air and put it on a shelf. "If you're going to throw it at me you won't get it back," he stated.
Trunks sulked until he thought Vegeta was ignoring him again then threw another toy at the back of the Prince's head.
Vegeta turned and caught it without effort. "It was a good strategy," he told the boy. "But just because I'm not watching you doesn't mean I've lowered my guard."
Trunks blew a raspberry at him.
"You must get that from your mother," Vegeta said. "I would never be so undignified."
Trunks threw another toy.
Vegeta reached up and caught it. "But your aim isn't bad."
Trunks laughed gleefully.
For a time Trunks' new game of throw things at Daddy kept the lavender haired boy happily entertained.
Vegeta dealt with his own boredom by seeing just how long he could wait before plucking Trunks' latest projectile out of the air. He kept his arms at his sides, waiting until the latest object was less than a millimeter from his body before even trying to catch it. Watching Vegeta's hand blur, disappear and seeing the item he'd thrown vanish only to reappear on the shelf behind Vegeta added to Trunks' fascination with the game.
Trunks waved his hands back and forth in the air as fast as he could then gave them a disappointed look when they didn't vanish like his father's.
Vegeta snorted in amusement at the boy's antics. "Your eyes will always be able to see your own movements, no matter how fast you get," he told the boy.
Trunks scowled and tried harder to make his hands disappear.
After a time Trunks started sending hopeful glances toward the door. Over the course of a few minutes the glances became longer and were accompanied by sniffles. Trunks pointed to the door. "Mama?" he asked.
"Your mother is busy," Vegeta informed the boy.
"Mama!" Trunks repeated more stridently.
"She will return later."
"MAMA!!" Trunks screamed, his cries rapidly escalated to a full-out tantrum.
Vegeta raised his voice to override Trunks' screams which only prompted more ear-splitting wails from Trunks.
"Woman!" Vegeta shouted over the intercom, in the background Bulma heard Trunks wailing plaintively for her. "Come deal with your brat!"
Bulma smirked when she activated the Vid-Screen and saw that Vegeta's hands were clapped firmly over his ears.
"Trunks sounds like he's hungry and over-tired," she informed Vegeta. "Pick him up and give him one of the bottles from the fridge while you hold him. He should settle right down." She hung up on Vegeta.
Vegeta stared at the darkened screen in shock; there was something wrong with the boy and the woman expected him to fix it? For a self-proclaimed genius Bulma could occasionally display a profound lack of common sense. He was the prince of a race which had been infamous across the galaxy for the destruction they'd wrought. Vegeta had long since lost count of the number of cities; hell, the number of worlds he had personally destroyed. He didn't fix things; he broke them! And the woman should know that.
Trunks showed no signs of calming down and his shrill cries were wrecking havoc on Vegeta's nerves. He decided he could handle getting the boy a bottle. If nothing else it would get him out of the room for a few minutes.
The moment the door shut behind Vegeta Trunks' cries rose to a fevered pitch. His doting grandparents had mysteriously vanished, his mother hadn't come when he wanted her and now his father was leaving him. In all his months of life Trunks had never felt so abandoned.
When Vegeta came back ten minutes later Trunks' wails had tapered off to a miserable sniffling.
Vegeta set the bottle on the floor beside the boy. Trunks ignored it and continued whimpering. Vegeta grimaced. Trunks curled up in an unhappy ball. He looked tiny, frail, helpless and lost; nothing at all like the teenaged warrior Vegeta had grown used to having around.
Vegeta sighed, reluctantly he sat on the floor beside Trunks. Cautiously he nudged the boy. Trunks crawled into Vegeta's lap and curled up against his chest. Vegeta handed the boy his bottle and wondered if there was any way they could skip this stage with this version of Trunks as well.
Bulma held out for half an hour before giving in to the urge to check on her baby and his father.
She was almost positive she'd correctly diagnosed Trunks' complaint and her instructions to Vegeta had been simplicity itself. Still it was Vegeta and Bulma was completely certain that no one had ever dreamed of asking him to hold a baby before.
Bulma walked into Trunks' room and grinned. Vegeta was sitting on the floor with Trunks asleep in his lap.
"Woman, take your brat," Vegeta hissed and Bulma noticed how tense he looked.
When Vegeta didn't stand up and hand her Trunks Bulma became even more confused. "Why didn't you just put him in his crib after he fell asleep?" she asked as she gently freed Vegeta's shirt from Trunks' clenched fist.
Vegeta watched Trunk's tiny hand vanish in Bulma's; he handled her as if she were made of spun glass.
Bulma's eyes followed Vegeta's gaze. "You won't break him," she said. "You're good at judging your strength and he's sturdier than you might think. Gohan was only four when Piccolo started training him."
'Roughly the same age I was when I was sent to Frieza,' Vegeta thought unexpectedly, but he didn't say anything.
"I'd rather you didn't dump Trunks in the middle of nowhere and make him survive on his own for six months, but he can handle it if you pick him up," Bulma continued.
Vegeta flushed slightly.
Bulma smiled. "I was nervous the first time I held him too," she said.
"I do not get nervous," the Saiyan Prince informed her.
"Of course not," Bulma snickered. She turned to lay Trunks in his crib then her eyes widened. "What happened to the playpen?"
This time it was Vegeta who was amused. "Apparently the boy didn't care for his cage."
"Oh!" Bulma moaned in dismay. "How am I going to keep him in one place now? Oh well, it's not like I don't have plenty of ultra-tough materials lying around..."
She laid Trunks down in his crib then spent several minutes rubbing his back to make sure he'd stay asleep if left on his own. She turned on the baby-monitor and smiled at Vegeta. "Thanks for watching him," she said. "I'm just about ready to start work on the GR. And you're off the hook, it should be alright to leave him now."
