Trunks ran down the hallway holding a new magazine in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. The poor boy was running late for his father's training session and those occurrences never ended well. He couldn't even think of a good excuse, school was out and there was no help needed that he could have been partaking in. No, he just had to run to the gravity room, face the music, and beg for forgiveness.

Trunks neared the doorway and slowed down, collecting his strength and his thoughts before facing the door and marching in. 'Now or never...'

Opening the door he walked in, head bowed. "I'm sorry father, I don't know how I-"

Trunks blinked his eyes once or twice to make sure what he was seeing was correct. The room was perfectly clean and empty, like it hadn't been touched all day. There were scorch marks along the wall opposite of him, but he'd remembered exactly how they got there. There wasn't a soul other than him in there. The youth gave a slight jump of excitement and turned around to exit when his heart dropped.

'Father's never late…' Trunks thought. It was really only five minutes late, but Vegeta was always ten minutes early. 'I'm in trouble now!'

After five minutes of inward debating he headed quickly towards the kitchen, followed by the living room where his mother was happily watching her shows and then upstairs to the bedrooms. Both bathroom doors were ajar so there was no way he was in there. The balcony was empty and he wasn't waiting in the boy's room. Trunks sighed. Vegeta must be mad.

Finally deciding to check the yard in some hope he was out there he'd all but given up. Turning back to head in the building he tried to enjoy the view of the sun setting on the dome, seeing as how it could be the last chance he'd get for a while. Finally, on the very top he noticed a dark patch, Prince of Saiyans in shape sitting perched on top.

'I mean, he's obviously mad, maybe it's a good chance for me to run inside. It looks like he's looking up so I'm probably safe…' he mused. 'Then on, last time Dad waited to punish me it ended up being three hours of training instead of the usual two. Maybe I should just go up there.'

Blasting up he flew in the prince's line of vision and landed neatly beside him. The taller man continued to sit there, glancing up at the sky as the stars started coming into view. The boy sat down next to him, mimicking his position and searching above him to see what had caught his father's attention. Nothing seemed out of place.

"I'm in trouble, aren't I?"

Vegeta smirked and broke his gaze, glancing down at the young boy beside him. "I could tell you were going to be late the second I saw you with your little magazine. No, you're not. Maybe today was a poor time to train anyway."

Trunks looked up confused. "Why, was it your birthday Dad? Did we forget?" the youth jumped up in a panic attack. He hadn't even gotten him a present or a cake or helped make a special meal.

Vegeta watched in amusement. "No, it's not that, son. Do you remember me telling you that you're a prince of a long gone planet?"

Trunks scratched his nose and regained composer. "Yeah, it was named after you, right? And my grandfather was the King and Frieza blew it up because he's a bad guy," the boy offered, trying to remember all the details.

"Yes, he annihilated it, 40 years ago today."

Trunks gasped and looked at his father's face. It was unreadable and his eyes stayed on a specific spot above them. Trunks looked up. "Is that where it was?"

"Yes, Trunks. If you use one of your mother's nice telescopes you could probably see all the floating rocks from it still."

Trunks looked up in the sky, it seemed like the same sky as always to the boy, but he could tell from his father's stature that the man could see more.

"What were you like? Before you came to Earth I mean."

Vegeta leaned back on the dome. All day he decided now was the time to tell his son. It never struck him that it would be hard to find the words to say. After all, this was his offspring, he needed to know the truth, but he was also his mother's son. He could end up metaphorically exploding and Vegeta would be ostracized by his only child. The man had decided days ago though that it was a chance he had to take.

"I murdered people for a living."

Trunks glanced back, his face obvious with shock and his eyes searching, hoping to find that this was one of his father's 'dark humor' moments, but inside he knew this was somehow the most serious the prince had ever been.

"What? What do you mean?"

"I was one of Frieza's most reliable henchmen. Not really hard, considering the bunch, but considering I was so young I was seen by them as a prodigy," Vegeta scowled. "Not that that really keeps you from beatings, mind you."

"But, but…" Trunks tried to process this information. "What do you mean they beat you?"

"What sort of punishment do you get when you've misbehaved?"

"Extra time in the Gravity Room," the boy said. He didn't see how this was related.

"Well, imagine that tenfold, without me holding back. And I'm not doing it to make you better, I'm doing it simply because you're weaker than me."

Trunks winced and looked at his father. It was obvious that the man he called 'Dad' wasn't coddled as a child as he imagined a prince should be, but he hadn't imagined anything like that.

"How did you break free?"

"Well, one gets stronger in situations like that. Eventually I came to Earth, trying to destroy Kakarrot and this planet to get the dragon balls. My fellow employee got into a fight with Piccolo, killing him." Trunks look off in the distance, trying to imagine Piccolo and his father on opposite sides at all. "I didn't know that if you killed the ruler of earth the balls would turn to stone."

"Wow, he was really the ruler of Earth?" Vegeta looked over at his son whose eyes were wide with curiosity. 'Perhaps I'll still have a son after this.'

"Yes, it's a long story that I wasn't even here for but it's true. Dende took over since then, of course. So I went to find the ones on Namek-"

"Mom said that's the first time she ever saw you face-to-face."

"This is true. That's when Frieza interfered. That was the first time I died. They brought me back though and Kakarrot had the pleasure of finishing him off." A scowl appeared on his face.

"That's not fair!" Trunks' face showed obvious anger. "You should have been the one to kill him, after all he put you through!"

"This may be true son, but I was too weak then." Vegeta sat up again, reliving the details in his mind. Trunks' mouth opened in surprise. He never, ever heard his father call himself weak.

"So I returned to space, training and looking for Kakarrot. I came here when I couldn't find him. Your mother gave me a place to stay, clothes (a smirk crossed his face, 'devilish woman,') and a room to train in while we waited for the androids to arrive. Kakarrot had returned and some kid from the future came back to warn us about an attack by them."

"Woah, cool!" Trunks had heard about this in passing but he'd never gotten any details. Who knew he'd get it from his father, of all people? "Who was it, was it one of us?"

Vegeta smirked. "It was you."

"REALLY? Awesome! So I'm going to grow up and be strong and time travel?"

"Well, this was an alternate you, not you from our future." Trunks' smile fell immediately. "Besides, I think you'll be much stronger," he added, giving his son the closest thing to a smile he could.

"Yeah!" Trunks lay down, imagining what it would be like to meet his parents ten years ago. 'Interesting, that's for sure…'

"I don't get it though. If you're father's gone, why aren't you the king?"

Vegeta's nose scrunched and he looked at the younger Saiyan. "Back on Vegeta, if one king got too old he would pass the throne on to his oldest son in a very fitting ritual. However, if he were killed in battle a large ceremony had to be given by the prince in order to announce what has happened. It would be grand, the great hall of the palace would be decorated and the highest ranking officer who was present at the king's death and the highest ranking priest would present a new set of battle armor designed for the prince with the king's symbol on the chest. That never happened, so as far as I am concerned, I am not the king."

Trunks took it all in, eyes wide in awe. However, there was one last question nagging at him.

"So, how did you and mom, like…" the youth wasn't sure how to word the next part. "Get together?"

Vegeta gave him a look that deeply implied that he didn't want to answer this question at all. "Well… your mother and I… We just… lived together."

Trunks looked at him. 'That is a terrible answer…'

"And when you live with someone, you start to… worry about them. When they do nice things for you."

"So, you worried about mom, and then you had me?"

"Precisely."

Trunks rolled his eyes. If he ever really wanted to know, he was definitely going to have to go to his mother about this one. "But, didn't you turn super saiyan around the same time? And Goten said that his dad said that you turned super saiyan in space."

"Yes, and that is true…" Vegeta knew it was time. If his son didn't hate him this far along, he hoped he wouldn't hate him after this. "I left while your mother was pregnant to train in space."

Trunks stared, mouth agape. He didn't know what to make of this new development. "So… so you left us?"

Vegeta nodded. "However, I came back."

"TO FIGHT CELL," Trunks closed his eyes and tried to fight the little tears threatening to form on his eyes. This wasn't the story he'd imagined about them. He wanted to think of them being very different, falling straight into love, and staying to be the stoic, stern father he knew him as.

"Yes, that's true. If I didn't want to stay, though, I certainly didn't have to."

Trunks bowed his head and thought about this. It was true, Bulma couldn't stop him from staying once, what would make her capable a second time?

"So why did you stay?"

Vegeta tried to remember his exact thoughts when he made that decision. "When Cell killed you from the future, I went ballistic. Even if he wasn't you he was, in a way, still my offspring. I realized that I couldn't handle that. I also didn't want you to grow up anything like I had. You needed a father figure."

Trunks wiped his eyes and looked over at the sun. It was almost gone, the sky turning a deep blue as the last rays lit up what they could.

Vegeta waited for a response. He was expecting more shouting, or maybe a silent storm off. Trunks may run inside or he may fly off, to Kakarrot's or to the middle of nowhere for some alone time.

"Hey, Dad? I think we need to go inside, I think food's almost done."

Vegeta looked at his son, showing slight shock and nodded. "We don't need your mother yelling at us for being late to dinner."

A/N: Sorry for the delay. I was working on two different chapters and two different papers. Fun stuff. Thank you!