In which Vegeta wakes up.

3400 words.

Bulma ran across the living room, carrying Bra with one arm and buttoning her trench coat with the other, while holding her notebook against her side with her elbow. She had a hair clip in her mouth, planning to put her hair up in the car since she had not had time for a blow-dry. She could not believe Vegeta had forgotten to take Trunks to his sport event before leaving for his training God knows where. She had had to drive her teenager to high school in the early morning before coming back to care for her infant daughter and eventually leave late for the most important meeting of the year. She expected her husband to do the very minimum for the family and he wouldn't even make it. When she came home that night after a wearying day of work and found the fridge empty, her children hungry and Vegeta slumped on the couch in his dirty suit, she seriously questioned her life choices. When going to bed she muttered to Dende that there'd better be a change soon for the sake of her marriage.

Vegeta rubbed his face against the pillow and tugged on the sheet to cover his shoulder. He was absolutely sure it was far too early for him to wake up. Bulma's alarm had not gone off yet and no daylight pierced through the thick curtains of their bedroom. Feeling cold, he rolled to sneak against his wife and steal some body heat. He suddenly felt his heart drop down in his stomach. He opened wide eyes and tried to grip the mattress before colliding with the floor in the most ungraceful way. He let out a painful moan and massaged the back of his head with his palm in an attempt to reduce the swelling. He was so irritated to be woken up in such an unpleasant fashion that it took him over a minute to understand why he had fallen off his bed. The reason was quite simple, he wasn't on his bed to begin with. He had been sleeping on a narrow pull-down bed that was built in the wall of the tiny living area he was in. Still on the floor he sat up, stretching his legs in front of him and placing his hands behind him to look around. He knew the place but couldn't remember where it was from. He stood up and opened the door to escape the cramped room. What he saw on the other side made him understand where he was. It was a space ship. Everything was there, the control panel, the screens, the seats. It was the ship Bulma had built to go to Namek. Vegeta scratched his hair where the back of his head had hit the floor. He blinked several times, walked to the center of the room and touched the buttons of the panel. Everything was real. He shook his head vigorously and decided to go and find Bulma to tell her about his injured skull and vivid hallucinations.

He didn't even have time to take a step outside that he heard Bulma's voice yell in his direction. The sun was blinding and he had to squint his eyes to look at her. He saw her silhouette run toward him and somehow felt that something was not right. When she stopped in front of him his jaw dropped. She was wearing a short red dress with thin horizontal black stripes and a cropped orange jacket. Her hair was magnificently curled and backcombed over her head where a blue band prevented it from falling over her eyes. Her fists were clenched on her hips and anger colored her cheeks. Nothing made sense to Vegeta and he decided he needed to get a bandage for his head before completely losing his mind.

"Bulma, I need a…" he began as he took a few steps toward her. She cut him immediately.

"YOU NEED TO SHUT UP, TAKE YOUR FUCKING MONKEY PRIDE AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!"

Vegeta opened wide eyes at the unexpected insult.

"Why are you..."

"HOW DARE YOU COME BACK AFTER STEALING THE SHIP!" she shouted.

"I hurt my head and…"

"I SHOULD LET YOU ROT OUTSIDE MAYBE YOU CAN LIVE IN YOUR DISPROPORTIONATE EGO!"

"Bulma darling please stop screaming obscenities the neighbors will hear you." Mrs. Brief said as she seemingly popped out of a flowerbed. Bulma growled in rage and left as quickly as she had come.

"Mr. Prince Vegeta Saiyan?" Mrs. Brief asked shamelessly, "please follow me, I'll show you your room."

Vegeta silently followed his mother-in-law, his instinct making his body tense. She led him to a suite he knew very well. It was a charming bedroom with a large walk-in closet and a bathroom that glimmered in the evening sunset. It was Bra's room. He didn't say a word and waited for Mrs. Brief to leave him alone. The room was nothing like he remembered. The walls were gray, the bathroom was cold and the closet was not cluttered with half a million zeni worth of baby clothes.

He lay on the bed and looked at the ceiling for a moment. Out of the windows he could see the city as it used to be when he first landed in Bulma's backyard twenty years before that. The Bulma he had met was definitely younger than the one he knew and considered his wife. The only explanation that came to his mind was that he had had an accident with the time machine and had been thrown in the past. He didn't however recall touching the said machine for over a decade. He worried he might also suffer from memory loss.

His reflection was interrupted when someone knocked on the door. He sat quickly on the bed and let the person come in. With a pang of disappointment, he watched a maid step in and place fresh clothes on the nearest table, before leaving without bowing. Vegeta stood up to take the clothes. It was a gray shirt paired with black pants. He held the shirt in front of him for a second and turned it around to look at the back. It was plain. Nothing shameful written on it. He let the piece of fabric fall back on the table and rubbed his face with his hand. He did not understand why this past was different. Why he had not been thrown under the shower by Bulma and then given a ridiculous outfit to wear. He eventually resigned himself and decided he would feel better after a good night of sleep.

The next morning Vegeta kept his eyes closed when he woke up. He extended his arm on the bed, hoping to touch his wife's soft body under the cover. He felt nothing but the cold wrinkles of the sheet. He sighed. Today was going to be a long day.

After a short shower, he walked down to the kitchen where he dived into the fridge as he usually did. It appeared time travel had made him particularly hungry and he took everything his arms could hold before turning around and closing the door with a move of the hips. He saw Bulma walk into the room.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asked severely.

"I'm hungry." Vegeta answered firmly. He wouldn't be caught apologizing for eating in his own kitchen.

"You really have no respect for anything, do you? I offer you a place to stay and you steal all our food!" she said angrily.

"What's wrong with you Bulma?" he cried out despite himself.

"What's wrong with ME?" she exclaimed, appelled.

Vegeta was about to answer forcefully when another man walked in the kitchen. He took Bulma by the hips to bring her close to him and kissed her passionately. Vegeta froze into place. Anything and everything went through his mind. Killing the man. Destroying the kitchen. Blowing up the planet. Killing himself. But the Prince off all Saiyans just stood there, unable to process the feelings that flooded his heart and paralyzed his mind while his wife was being kissed by another man. Bulma's cheeks became red with heat. The man eventually broke the kiss and hugged her tightly.

"Nothing is wrong with you Babe, you're perfect." he purred in her ear.

"Yam' please stop… Not in front of him…"

Yamcha detached his eyes from Bulma for the first time and looked around the room before stopping on Vegeta.

"Oh sorry I had not seen you there behind the table." he said with a condescending smile. "Do you have everything you need?". He looked at the food Vegeta was holding in his arms and had a concerned frown when a raw chicken leg fell out and bounced on the table. "Bulma dear, will you please wait for me in our bedroom? I need to talk with our guest."

Vegeta watched Bulma leave the room with stupefaction. Yamcha bent down beside him. The human was different from the one he remembered. He was taller, he wore a dark suit and his hair was glossed flat over his head. If it had not been for the scars on his face and his ridiculous sweet words, Vegeta would never have recognized him. Yamcha placed his hands on Vegeta's shoulders with an unprecedented confidence and began to talk very slowly as if he was talking to a young child.

"You do not hurt Bulma, ok? Bulma is my wife and if you are mean to her I will be mean to you. Do you understand Vegena?"

Vegeta was outright convinced this scene was worse than any shock he could receive on the head. It was like each word was worse than the previous one. They were resonating in his head as if he had been hit with a saucepan. He let the food fall on the floor, trembling with a rage he had not felt in a long time, and suddenly punched Yamcha in the face with a loud roar. Or at least he tried to. Bulma appeared between them and he stopped his fist half an inch away from her nose.

"I knew I couldn't leave you alone." she spat, "What kind of savage are you? Do you think you can live in my house in beat my husband? If I see you raise a finger again I swear I'll lock you in the ship and send you to die in outer space."

"It's ok honey," Yamcha said, "he will soon learn to be a bit more civilized. It must be tough to come from a planet where they do nothing but fight."

Bulma didn't take her eyes away from Vegeta. He saw a chilling mix of anger and distaste he had never seen in her blue irises. The violence of her words echoed painfully inside him as she added:

"Don't think you are too powerful for me, I have strong sedatives you wouldn't even wake up before dying."

Lying flat on the carpet Vegeta wondered if he was in Hell. A world where Bulma loathed him and Yamcha could call him Vegena and still walk out the door with his head on his shoulders. A world where nobody cared about him. He shook the thought away. He knew what Hell was like and that was not it. He thought about reaching Dende for help but then remembered the tiny god had yet to be hired in this past dimension. He stayed in his room the whole day, trying to avoid a new horrible discovery. Around 7pm the maid brought him a TV dinner. He felt like a prisoner. It was 4am when he finally fell asleep, after deciding to give himself 3 days to fix the situation, before going on a quest for the dragon balls and asking Shenron to bring him back in his world.

The next day Vegeta put his plan into action. After a long contemplation at night he had been able to single out a key moment in his relationship with Bulma, and was ready to recreate the scene, in hopes it would bring her to reconsider her marriage with the weakling. He sneaked into the space ship and pondered the best way to blow it up without damaging the nearby building, while injuring himself just enough to catch Bulma's attention. He sent a small beam through the control panel to destroy the central pillar and let the structure collapse over him. A terrible screech grew louder and louder as the walls bent and creased around the room. A large piece of metal fell on his back but to his great disappointment he was still perfectly conscious and safe after the whole ship had disintegrated on itself. Alerted by the noise, Bulma ran in the backyard toward the spacecraft. Vegeta had a moment of hope before hearing her enraged screams and seeing her arms move in the air in threatening gestures. He took a step back to escape her wrath but his foot rolled over a large screw, got caught under the debris and he lost his balance. He fell over the rubble heavily, his temple hit a sharp steel beam with a bloodcurdling sound and the screams stopped.

Vegeta woke up without remembering going to bed the night before. Something on his disturbed his breathing. He felt pain in his skull. He blinked and realized he was in his room, his head bound with thick bandages and a breathing mask over his nose and mouth. A paradoxical feeling of pure joy spread through his body. He had managed to injure himself and be taken care of by Bulma. He knew he just had to turn his head and he would see her asleep at the desk, waiting for him to wake up. He was shaking with anticipation when he turned on the bed to look aside. He felt like he had been thrown in icy water when he saw the empty chair. Nobody was watching over him while he recovered from his injuries. He was alone. His heart beat achingly hard in his chest. He took the mask off his nose and rolled to face the wall. He tugged on the comforter to bring it over his head and isolate him from this dreadful world. He had always liked to think that he was independent, that he did not need anyone to be happy and that he could actually fly off at any time if he ever felt like it. It was a way to protect himself, to think he would never suffer the loss of a loved one if he simply did not allow himself to care for anyone. Yet there he was, suffocating under a cover, crushed by the unforgiving truth. The Prince of all Saiyans missed his family so much he couldn't think about a life without them.

Vegeta heard the door open and close but did not bother turning to see another maid.

"Vegeta?"

It was Bulma's voice. He sat up so quickly he felt dizzy for several seconds.

"I've talked with Yamcha" she said as she leaned against the door, "We decided that you had to leave."

"To leave?" Vegeta repeated with incomprehension. The only place on Earth he knew was the Capsule Corps building.

"Yamcha found you a small flat, the rent is paid for three months, you should be able to support yourself by then."

"How?"

"Find a job!" Bulma snapped, "Make friends, build a family, live your life, you know."

"I already have a family!" he argued.

"And they are all dead. You have to leave."

Vegeta understood it was his last chance to try and go back to his world.

"I will leave but please just listen to me." he said seriously. "I know you've worked on physics… Time travel, parallel universes…"

"How would you know that?" Bulma asked with genuine surprise.

"Because I'm from another universe."

"Why would I believe this?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"You've always believed in it." he affirmed. "Also you sleep with three pillows and you take your coffee black although you think it's disgusting and always complain about it after the first sip."

"Have you been stalking me?" she asked with suspicious squinted eyes.

"Where I come from we are married, we have been married for over 15 years." he explained.

Bulma gasped at his bold statement.

"I don't see how I could have ended up marrying you. Did you threaten me or something?"

"Why would I do that? You proposed to me! You said you wanted to become a princess!"

"Well, that's about the only upside there is to marrying you I guess." she shrugged.

"We have two kids."

"Two kids? With you?" she laughed. "Like, a monkey and a caveman?"

"We have a boy, Trunks. He has got my face and my power but he has your hair and your character. The other is a three-year-old girl, Bra. She is your exact clone but she tends to take after me for her personality."

"Look at you, all moved by your imaginary family." she teased. "Anyway, I don't understand why I would have left Yamcha."

"You grew tired of him, he was weak and he didn't deserve you."

"Oh but you deserved me maybe?"

"No I…"

"How did I even fall in love with someone like you?"

There was a heavy silence. Nothing could explain why Bulma had one day decided to grace him with her attention.

"I don't know." he eventually admitted. "I can't explain I… I was just lucky."

"If this is the truth I wouldn't call you lucky." she said as she shook her head and walked up to him. "I would say you got a fucking miracle." She bent over him and waved a threatening finger above his nose. "You'd better be taking good care of your Bulma because I'm pretty sure you met the single version of me who can see you as husband material."

Vegeta got woken up by a loud scream in the dark. His own scream. He sat on the bed and frantically looked around, moving his hands on the sheets to find his bedside table. His fingers brushed past something warm and he twitched. He felt the bed move and someone turned on the light. Bulma was looking at him with a worried look. It was his bedroom. His bed. His Bulma.

"Vegeta?"

"I had a nightmare" he said with wide eyes.

She gently tapped the bed with her hand to invite him closer.

"Was it the one in which you forget to put on your suit and walk around with your armor over your underwear?"

"No! It was serious!" Vegeta said angrily. She would never let him forget that time he talked in his sleep.

"Oh…" Bulma whispered. For someone with a past as bloody as Vegeta's, a serious nightmare could relate to anything from the death of his parents to the mass murder of innocent children.

"Was it about… about your life before we met?" she asked carefully.

"No. It was worse. Way worse."

"Worse?" Bulma shivered. "Oh my God Vegeta do you want to talk about it?"

"I don't." After a moment he added: "Give me your phone please."

Bulma did not know what to expect but did not want to perturb him. She handed him her mobile phone. He quickly scrolled down the contact list and called Yamcha.

"What are you…"

"Shhhh" he ordered when the phone started ringing.

Yamcha picked up quite quickly considering the fact that it was 3am.

"Bulma?" he asked with a voice full of hopes.

"Bulma is busy." Vegeta answered sternly.

"V…Vegeta? Wha… What's up?" Yamcha shyly uttered.

Vegeta hung up and threw the phone back on the nightstand.

"Good." he said before laying back on the bed, taking his wife into his arms and holding her tightly against his chest in a possessive embrace. "I won't forget the kids again." he mumbled, "Do your stuff, I'll handle the kids and the house." And he fell back asleep before Bulma could say anything.

On the Lookout Mr. Popo looked at the Namekian standing next to him and shook his head in disapproval.

"Don't you think you went a bit too far?"

"I don't." Dende answered smugly, "It was just what he needed.".