For the first two or three days, Vegeta hardly got up. He was tired, which was understandable, and he was sore.
For those days, I thought about what to name them. They were different than most people on this planet in more ways than one. I didn't want them to have the common boring names the people of this planet did. They didn't look like a Charlie or a Sarah; and I didn't know enough about being a Saiyan to think of anything outside of names I'd heard on Earth.
After the third day was almost done, they began opening their eyes. At first they were cross-eyed and blinked continuously like they had something in their eyes.
The boys had the same color eyes; which was no surprise since they were probably identical; a light auburn that was almost red.
But the girl, the tiny princess; her's were different. They were much redder than the boy's. Her's were a little eerie to stare at for a long time. When I asked Vegeta, he said she had a pigment deficiency, which meant that brown eyes were either repressed, or completely absent from her genes. He said that if they didn't become brown or black in a few days then they will stay the color that they are.
They were much tinier than I had expected, even though Vegeta had told me they would be small. Altogether, they were probably about 4 ½ pounds.
They had not had time to bond with Vegeta very much yet, mostly because he had been trying to recover from after the birth. They did not seem aware of his presence.
"Hi babies," I said upon entering the room and grinned. I moved to the first crib, which belonged to the middle baby. I dangled my hand over his head as his eyes opened. He reached for it, but, just like his siblings, he had no dept perception yet. He would reach and fall just a little short.
They where not in the crying phase yet, which was good. They were saving it, apparently, for when Vegeta was awake.
I lifted him from his crib, which I finally built just a day before. "You're such a good boy," I cooed and kissed his forehead.
I brought him to my chest, and he instinctively held onto my shirt. He was not strong enough to hold on, but he did try. They all did that, so it much have been a Saiyan thing.
I just held him for a little while. He was mostly bald, but the little hair he did have was brown and soft. And even though he had not been bathed that day, he smelled good. It was a distinct baby smell.
The day after their birth, I had broken into the cottage I had shared with Chi-Chi and Goten just half a year ago. I took two boxes of baby clothes that both Gohan and Goten had worn.
I brought it back here and discovered that mostly everything was blue or green. So to make it easy, the first boy was dressed in all blue, and the second in all green. Even though they didn't have names, I didn't want to mix them up before they were even a week old.
The clothes in the boxes were wrapped in plastic to keep the moths and dust off them, like she had been prepared for a third child after Goten. Along with all the boy clothes, there was a little pink dress. She probably bought it after Gohan was born. She desperately wanted a third child, and she wanted it to be a girl.
After Goten, I thought about having another child. But there was always too much going on. I could never think about it seriously. Gohan and Goten were born nearly 12 years apart, and Goten was already in high school. I didn't think it was a good idea to have them so far apart. So we didn't have another one. Maybe if we did have another one, Vegeta and I would have never gotten this far.
I put him back into the crib. They were getting fussy; they were probably hungry.
They ate a lot. From a can of formula that makes three gallons, they probably have a gallon each a day.
They were getting to the point where they would require round-the-clock attention, and Vegeta had no interest to get up, or even trying.
Before I began with the diapers, I went to see if he was awake.
He was, but he pretended to be asleep.
I lay on the bed next to him. "Are you asleep?" I whispered into his ear. He hated that because it tickled his ear. He slapped his ear and pulled away from me.
"Yes, I'm asleep."
I sat up, leaning on one arm. "It's time to waaaaake-uuuuuup…." I said in a sing-song tone. "The babies are hungry,"
"No…." He whined. "Just ten more minutes."
"Life is not going to wait ten more minutes for you, Vegeta." When he didn't respond, I rolled atop him, slipping between his thighs. I loved the way he looked when he was beneath me, and I loved it even more when he was on the verge of falling asleep. His eyes took on this squinty look like he was trying to sleep and look at me at the same time.
I kissed him chastely.
He attempted to push me off, but the attempt was half-hearted. "Go away…" he muttered and his eyes slipped shut once again.
"Aw…. Are we sleepy?" If he had not been so tired, he probably would have hit me for talking to him in such a manner. "Do you want me to sing you a song?"
"No,"
I was tone-deaf, apparently, so he hated when I sang to him. "If you like to talk to tomatoes, if a squash can make you smile,"
"No,"
"If you like to walk with potatoes, up and down the produce isles,"
"Stop it."
"Have we got a show for you,"
"Kakorot, don't."
I took a deep breath. "Veggie tails, Veggie tails, Veggie tails- Veggie tails. Broccoli, celery. Gotta be… Veggie tails."
"Kakorot, go away."
"Cauliflower, half an hour-"
"Okay, I'm getting up. Just stop singing."
I pushed off him. "Okay, great. I don't know the rest of the song anyway."
He rolled his eyes and sat up. "Are you going to do that every morning?"
I shrugged. "Maybe. Come on. The wee-ones are calling."
He muttered something about me being too perky, and fallowed me to the nursery.
First was diaper duty. Heh. Duty.
But before we could put the new diapers on, we had to poke holes into the new diapers for their tails.
Vegeta took the girl because he was a bastard. There was a lot of mystery involved in changing a boy. Would they need to pee again? Would they miss you? All of these questions were frightening in which I did not know the answer.
They had good aim, so they rarely missed.
I pulled off the diaper, and sure enough, it shot right onto me. He was just waiting. I recoiled, stepping back half a step.
"Good boy," Vegeta said with a laugh. He reached over and patted the boy's belly. He finished with the girl and put her back into her crib.
I put a new diaper on him and went to change my clothes as Vegeta finished with the last baby.
I had one last clean shirt. There was a lot of laundry to be done from yesterday it seemed, because the pile had doubled since last night.
I went to mix formula while Vegeta entertained them.
The formula was pre-digested since they were newborns. I wasn't sure exactly who digested it first, but it did smell like vomit. I mixed it with water and shook it up. A few times in the past the cap came off when I shook it. I smelled like bile for hours that day.
I brought the bottles into the nursery and handed one to Vegeta.
"Feed the boy first because he screams if he doesn't get fed first."
"He must be the dominate one." He remarked.
I shrugged. "All I know is he's really loud."
It didn't take long to feed them, it never did, for they hardly breathe as they eat, which saved time.
"They need names." I stated. "It's only going to get harder the next few months, and them having no names will make it even worse."
He sighed. "On Vegeta, the women always name the children. The first boy is always named after the father anyway."
I could hardly keep my self from rolling my eyes. "And that would be me, or you?"
He fell silent.
"Exactly." I stated, irritated that I had to point this out to him so many times. "Now. I think it's stupid to have a combination of both our names, so I think it should be something completely different than both ours."
"Why don't we name them after Veggie-Tails since you love them so much." The sarcasm seemed to drip from his voice; dry and crackling.
"Mia, Ty and …. Ry."
He snorted. "Nothing that rhymes."
This was harder than I thought it would be. How difficult is it to give a child a name?
I went to the first child's crib. He was asleep, his long little eyelashes resting on his tiny cheeks.
Vegeta looked over my should for a moment. "I think Aizel." He pronounced it quickly and oddly.
"'Eye-sul'?" I asked.
"Yes. In Saiyan mythology, he's the god of Vengeance. He is- was- worshiped mostly to the East, by the people of the desert."
I thought for a moment. "I didn't think you believed in God."
"I don't believe in the one you call 'God'. But I don't believe in the hundreds of gods created to explain the universe through the eyes of a Saiyan either."
"Then what do you believe in?"
This question seemed to leave him at a loss for a moment. He didn't seem to know how to start.
"I, as the Prince of Saiyans, was bred to believe in live as a task, and war as the bridge to honor among a physical place. I, as a man, believe in many abstract complexities of theory."
He lost me at some point. "I don't think I understand."
"I believe in birth and in death. Those two are constants. I believe in choice. I believe in vengeance. Power. I do believe in a higher power; but not in the same sense that you do. My 'God' as you call it, derives everything that happens by chance. There is no 'It was his time to go' shit, just a simple roll of the dice."
I understood what he was saying, but didn't understand how he could think the way he did. "But how could you base the entire structure of everything on chance?"
He shrugged, "It could be, possibly, that we are only guarantied each day because of chance. A 100 sided dye that is 99 live and 1 die, rolling constantly."
"And if 'die' ever faces up,"
"Then you blink out of existence."
I knew what he meant, but I couldn't get myself to get around what I had been taught; there is but one God, and no other.
"So you never thought there was just one God?"
He gave me a look like he didn't understand. "Kakorot, do you realize how many planets there are? All of them have their 'God'. There is always a different story behind creation for each one. After you hear nine thousand stories, you begin to wonder if they are all right, or all completely wrong and based off imagination on its own."
I decided to drop the subject. I could not compare what I had been taught on earth to what he had witness through years in space.
"How old are you, Vegeta?"
He must have had to do some math, for he did not answer right away. "Probably close to sixty… not any older than sixty-five though."
"Sixty-five?! I don't believe you. How can you be sixty-five? You don't look much older than me!"
He seemed to not understand what I was saying, for his eyes fell shut, trying to meet my level of 'Earth-thinking'. "Saiyans… they live for a long time."
"How long?"
"The oldest I know of was over one hundred and fifty when he died."
I whistled. "Why so old?"
He shrugged. "Don't know. But you have to factor in the time in space. In space, you don't age the same. So technically, I'm about 40."
So he was about the same age as me. He looked older though. I put Aizel into his crib. He had fallen asleep in my arms, and when I placed him back down his eyes opened for a second and then rolled shut.
I moved to stand over number two's, as I'd come to call him, crib. He was a little quieter than the other boy, a little more laid back. He was awake, his bright auburn eyes wide. He smiled, stretching out his hands and feet. He grabbed one of his feet and put it into his mouth as he watched me.
I laughed, picking him up. I raised him above my head. He looked down at me, mouth wide with joy.
It was a Kodak moment, right up until he threw up on me. I swooped him down, holding him away.
Vegeta was laughing now. "That made my day."
"Aw, that was my last shirt!"
He shrugged. "Go naked." There was still a hint of a smile on his face. "I think Lysander."
When I gave him a look like I didn't know what he was talking about, he elaborated.
"He was the God of Chaos." He thought for a moment longer. "How will that sound? 'How did you get you name?' 'I threw up.'"
I laughed; surprised he had made a joke about puke. I put him back into the crib.
"The girl." He said, frowning. "There were no women in Saiyan mythology."
"Really? How come?"
He shrugged. "I didn't come up with it."
It took a long time for one of us to come up with a name for her. All day, actually.
It was noon by the time I thought of something.
I remembered seeing some boring special on Mozart a while ago. I remember they said he did most of his work in a place in Austria. It took me forever to remember what the name of the place was, though.
"How about Vienna?"
Vegeta thought it over. He had never heard of the place or of Mozart at all, so he had no problem with it.
Life was good for a long time; almost four months. Vegeta quickly went back to his normal size, and no longer looked emaciated. The triplets could sit up, but they could do little else.
I had not heard for anyone in forever. I wondered how Bulma was doing with the baby; if she knew what it was, if she had a name for it, if she planned to tell Vegeta.
Chi-chi had not spoken to me since that fight. That had been such a long time ago. Seven months.
As time went on, I began to feel like there was nothing more than this. Like the world we had built in this tiny cottage was going to close us off from the rest of the world forever. Drive us maybe to madness.
I realized that my thoughts were becoming paranoid. Irrational. I had thought maybe it was just restlessness. But I had the feeling that life was about to get very interesting.
