Vegeta shook his head, desperately trying to focus. He had barely been functional when he had gone to fetch Trunks for a spar days earlier, and he had not rested or eaten once since then. Everything was becoming a mottled blur, and he knew that he had less than an hour to give his body what it needed before things got ugly. His body was so deprived that it was actually starting to shake with small tremors.

Barely able to make sense of the world around him, the prince could determine that his son was still crying on the couch. He knew that there was some sort of procedure for getting the boy to stop that, but outside of threats and bribery, Vegeta was not sure how to accomplish that goal. Whenever Trunks had been worked up, and the woman had been unavailable, Vegeta had always been able to fall back on one of those two tactics. However, the situation did not seem to warrant his usual practices, leaving the senior prince at a loss.

Unsure of what to do next for his son, but being well aware of how quickly his body was failing him, Vegeta reached out and grabbed one of the snacks Bulma had brought out a few minutes earlier. It was not much, and it certainly lacked the nutrients and calories he needed, but if nothing else it could buy him a few extra minutes to form a plan. The only things immediately available were prepackaged junk foods and the kitchen fruit bowl, and that would have to do.

His stomach rioted as he swallowed, furious at the feeble attempt to provide real food, but the prince pushed on. Pitiful food was better than no food, and with the adrenaline from his battles with Kakarot and his friends dying down, Vegeta's body was crashing too fast to get anything more substantial.

After several minutes of consuming what was readily available to him, Vegeta could finally feel the tremors subsiding. He was still in danger, but it was no longer as critical. Glancing to his side, he noticed that Trunks' sobs had died down and that the boy was on the verge of falling back to sleep. "Oh no you don't," he grumbled, hauling the boy up into a seated position. "You don't get to close your eyes again until you get some real food into your system."

"I'm so tired," the little boy whined pitifully. "I'm really hungry, but I just want to go back to sleep."

"Tough," his father commanded, giving the boy a firm shake. Trunks' body had gotten the rest it had needed, and the time had come to supply it with nutrition. "You are going to get to your feet and walk around this room until your mother gives you real food. You got that?"

Trunks nodded, but he began slumping back against the couch. With a feeble noise, he felt his father's strong hand grasp him by the scruff of the neck, and before he could truly register what was going on, the boy was deposited on his feet.

"March," Vegeta commanded, giving the boy a mild shove.

The noise that escaped Trunks was indiscernible, but even without being fully awake he followed his orders. As he began to walk in circles around the living room, Vegeta shakily got to his own feet and made his way to the kitchen.

"You better get that boy his food soon," he informed the heiress, sliding as smoothly as he could into one of the kitchen chairs. "He will be falling asleep again soon, and your window of opportunity will be lost for days and he will run the risk of real damage."

"I'm on it," Bulma quickly replied, not even sparing the Saiyan a glance as she pulled a large bowl out of the microwave. "I know this isn't great, but the fastest thing I could think of that was high calorie was chili," she said, turning around with the enormous bowl. "I can get him started on this, and then I'll be able to get something better going. Oh, and I put a rush order on whatever 'The Usual' is at the place on speed dial seven, which is apparently labeled as our son's favorite eatery on the phone."

As the aroma wafted toward the Saiyan prince, Vegeta found himself sorely tempted to steal his son's food. His body cried out for sustenance, and even the pitiful amount of meat in the dish his woman carried seemed amazing. While Bulma walked out of the room to deliver the food to their son, Vegeta inadvertently cracked part of the kitchen table as he forced himself to stay put. He forced himself to stare at the blank wall of the kitchen until he was sure she was gone before unsteadily jumping to his feet and making a break for the refrigerator.

In the other room, Bulma watched Trunks complete another lap of the living room. "Gee, who knew my son was a zombie?" she gently teased, holding out the bowl. Knowing how Goku usually reacted to food, she was not at all surprised to watch the half lidded eyes of the boy roam toward the food. "Come and get it!"

Trunks did not need to be told twice. Without even allowing his mother to hand him a spoon, the child took the bowl and tipped it, funneling it into his mouth as quickly as he could. It only took a few seconds for the bowl to be emptied and for Trunks to greedily lick at what remained in the bowl.

"Um, I take it you want seconds?" Bulma nervously asked with a chuckle. She had seen Goku eat with remarkably poor manners, but what she could remember of Trunks gave no indication that he did the same. The display was slightly shocking.

Giving only a grunt for an answer, Trunks handed the cleanly licked bowl back to his mother. He wanted more food, and he wanted it immediately. As the stunned mother took the bowl, Trunks turned his focus to the remaining bags of crackers and cookies from the first tray and attacked them with ferocity.

"Holy crap," Bulma muttered, watching the wrappers fly. "Um, I'll go make the next round of this, and I ordered out for a ton of food that should be delivered pretty soon. Does that sound okay to you?" There was a mild grunt coming from her son, and Bulma smirked. "I'll take that as a yes." She turned around to head back into the kitchen, but the telltale sound of the deliveryman buzzing had her hanging a U-turn. "Hey, look at that!" she laughed, dropping the bowl on the coffee table. "It got here faster than we thought!"

Bulma kept her son company as he feasted on everything he could get his hands on, and she found herself smiling broadly as she watched him. While the display of food inhalation was slightly disturbing, a very real part of her felt a warm glow of happiness spreading over her. Her memories of his life were still scattered, and there were enormous gaps that still existed, but she truly felt that rush of joy as she spent the next hour helping her son get his strength back.

/

Vegeta stood at the entryway of the bedroom, staring inside. Having gotten just enough food to keep from going into convulsions, he had gone to his quarters to rest for the first time in days. It was a simple enough idea, one that had been done tens of thousands of times before.

But something stalled him in that doorway. As he looked in the room, he could not help feeling like he was somehow intruding. For years it had been his room, but at that moment, it somehow felt wrong to call it such. The sheets had been changed back, the curtains were thick and dark, and there was no longer a scrap of pink left in it. His clothes lay in the drawers, his shoes were stored in the closet, and his toothbrush rested in the adjoining bathroom. But somehow, it did not feel like it was his.

No, it was her room again. It had been since the day of the accident. She had allowed him entrance to her room, and certainly into her bed, but that was the problem. She still saw it as her room with her bed in it. He had suspected that she thought as such since the day after he and Trunks had returned to the compound, and her recent behavior had only confirmed that. And while he desperately wanted to blame her for that, he knew it was only partially her fault. Ever since the accident, she had been different. Very different.

Too different.

She was not the woman that had invited him to live with her on a whim in spite of his status of enemy. She was not the obnoxious shrew who had stolen his clothes and left the most atrocious clothing she could find in its wake. She was not the shrill genius who built the training room for him, only to add in an enormous television screen that she could access at any time to yell at him in high-definition whenever she was in a mood. She was not the psychotic caregiver who nursed him back to health one day only to threaten to murder him in his sleep the next. She was not the woman that would call him an ass at lunch and swear eternal devotion to him by dinner.

She was not his.

Shut up, he told himself. You are being nothing more than a paranoid little fool right now. You are exhausted. You are malnourished. You are going to rest for a while, digest what you have eaten, finish replenishing your system, and then you will stop being a pitifully emotional little bitch. Now stop being weak and take a nap!

With a small nod and feeling very slightly better, the prince took a step into the room.

"Oh, Vegeta!"

The Saiyan paused in his step and glanced over his shoulder. The woman was walking down the hallway in his direction, and there was a concerned look on her face. "Hn?" he responded.

Bulma approached her lover, a slightly nervous look on her face. "Um, Trunks is winding down his meal, and I thought you and I should talk."

Vegeta offered only a silent nod in return. He had never particularly enjoyed the aspects of their relationship that involved talking about it, nor was he good at them. In fact, they often made him so uncomfortable that he had made getting out of them into an art form. However, given their strenuous circumstances, he knew that avoiding it could do so much more damage than escaping that it would not be worth it.

In front of him, Bulma tugged nervously on her arm. "Uh, listen," she reluctantly began, avoiding eye contact, "you and I…I know that we have a history together, and I really appreciate everything that you've done, and how much I've been putting you through, but…"

Her sentence died there, but the message was clear enough for Vegeta to feel his blood turn to rivers of ice in his veins.

Neither one of them spoke for a whole agonizing minute before Bulma summoned the courage to finish her statement. "Vegeta," she softly told him, "I think it would be best, at least for right now, if we kind of cooled things off. You've done so much for me and our family lately, and I know it hasn't been easy on you, but it would make me more…comfortable, I guess is the word, if maybe you could stay in your old room for a while." Her eyes were still down and she was still tugging on her arm as she added, "It's not a permanent thing, just until I can settle back in to this life a little better. I'm…I'm a little overwhelmed right now, and…"

"And my presence is not helping," he coolly replied.

Bulma shrugged one shoulder, her eyes dropping from the wall to the floor. "Well, yeah," she truthfully told him. "You know that I still have huge holes in my memory, and I think it would be best for all of us if I get a few more of those filled in before we live together like a couple again. I'm happy to have you living here, and I would never try to keep you away from our family, but the couple thing…it just doesn't feel right to me right now. Not with everything that's still missing." Slowly, she brought her eyes back up to the wall, still avoiding the gaze of her lover. "And like I said before, it's not a forever thing. Just…just for a little while."

The waves of emotions that ran through the prince was so varied that he could not even begin to identify them as they crashed against his soul. The anger at being kicked out of his own room without being asked, the grief at the loss of his lover, the betrayal of her suggestion…it was far too much for him to process in an instant. All he could do was stand there and glare at the woman, not moving a muscle, not even to breathe.

Barely able to gather the courage to do so, the heiress forced herself to look her lover in the eye. "It's a lot to ask, and I know it," she told him in a gentle but firm tone. "And believe me, I understand that it's not at all fair to you. But I can't…I'm just not ready for being your wife, or your girlfriend, or…or whatever the hell I was to you." She knew that it was a poor place to end the conversation, but even that much had been so stressful that she wanted desperately to take a few hours off and rest in peace. Without another word, she turned around and walked away, planning to use her parent's temporarily vacated bedroom for a nap. After all, it seemed downright wrong to ask Vegeta to move out of the room only to walk in past him and claim the bed.

Still stunned, Vegeta watched the woman disappear down the hall. The voice was starting to whisper in his mind again, and he found that he could not force it away. He also found that he lacked the will to try. It sounded so right at the moment, and there was not even a slight temptation to attempt to push it away. It was right. It was perfectly right.

After several more minutes ticked by, the prince shook himself out of his self-imposed daze. The voice had quieted down, and without its menacing taunts, Vegeta found himself once again able to move. The maelstrom of thoughts had subsided into an empty numbness, a state he was well accustomed to. Do not think about the pain and the pain no longer hurts. Just move forward, and never turn back. It was the only tolerable way for his system to cope with his situation.

He was not entirely certain of what he was doing as he did it. His body seemed to take full command, allowing his overtaxed mind a brief rest in the sea of numbness that was forming. It would be hours later that he would realize that he had taken his things and once again removed them from their bedroom, allowing it to become hers. It would be longer before he would wonder why he complied so readily. But he had not slept in days, and his actions were not his own. His body did not care about emotional turmoil any longer, and wanted nothing more than to find the fastest possible way to get the direly needed rest.

By the time he had finished relocating his possessions, his mind had shut down entirely. There was absolutely no conscious awareness of his surroundings as he finished his final trip and closed the door.

He had been utterly unaware that his son had been standing in the hall, watching with horror and anger as his parents' relationship suffered another enormous fracture.

And he had missed it entirely when Trunks ran off as fast as he could, leaving the compound behind him.