The week fell away in uncomplicated normalcy. They each worked tirelessly, Bulma in the lab, and Vegeta in the Chamber. They barely crossed paths during the day, running into each other occasionally for a food or bathroom break, and they'd share snippets of conversation and not much else. It appeared as though nothing had changed, but the nights proved otherwise. Bulma never slept alone anymore. She'd wake up in the middle of the night and Vegeta would still be in her bed, sprawled on his stomach, one arm slung heavily over her as he snored softly. Bulma loved watching him like this; he slept just like Goku and it was definitely excellent blackmail material. That aside though, it was really the only time Vegeta let his guard down and she liked to look at his face when it wasn't scowling at her. He looked so calm, so young. Her heart filled with such cloyingly sweet love that she just wanted to kiss every inch of his face and squeeze him to death, but somehow she didn't think that'd go over too well. She'd already freaked him out enough; it was amazing he was even still here. She didn't need to send him screaming into the night. She managed to only gently touch his hair while he slept, holding her true feelings at bay.

Vegeta meant to leave. They'd have mind-blowing sex and he would have every intention to get out of there...but she was just so warm. She was so warm and soft and he'd try to get up but her heat just made his eyes so heavy and before he knew it it was morning and he'd stayed. Again. He tried to be angry about it, tried to berate himself for being completely without willpower, but when he slept with her he didn't have nightmares and those weren't exactly something he missed. His sleep in her bed was deep and blank, and he could tell it was going to be a hard addiction to break. Each night his resolve weakened a little more, a little more, and by the end of the week he just had no intention of getting up at all. He'd wake in the morning before her and simply lay there, enjoying the still-new feeling of being completely rested, shoving her occasionally to stop her mumbling in her sleep. Sometimes he'd leave his arm over her back as it was when he awoke and let his eyes wander over her long messy hair, her milky skin, her cheeks flushed with sleep. She slept like a rock, and seemed to sleep harder and harder as the week went on. He could've shot his Galic Gun at the ceiling and only gotten a sigh in response. It gave him plenty of opportunity to leave without having to face her or the uncomfortably open display of happiness on her face when she opened her eyes and saw him beside her. He didn't know what to do with it. He didn't know what to do with her. But most of all, he didn't know what to do with the strange, warm swell of his insides whenever she was around.

Sunday came around again, and Vegeta woke with a slow cat-like stretch and scratched his neck with one hand, unconsciously reaching for Bulma with the other. His fingers grazed her arm and he suddenly jolted up as if struck by lightning. He whipped his head from side to side, scouring every inch of the room. The door was shut, the windows were shut, and all was silent. There was no one else in here but her. Vegeta furrowed his brow and sat still as stone, trying to identify the unfamiliar buzz of energy that seemed to be coming from...nowhere.

"What the hell." Vegeta murmured, still looking around the room in confusion. It wasn't strong, it wasn't as if Kakarot was standing next to the bed or anything...actually...it kind of felt like Kakarot's brat, but also weirdly like his own ki. It felt separate yet somehow...dependent? Like it was an extension of...Vegeta's wandering eyes fell on Bulma and they slowly widened. The energy he felt was an extension. An extension of her.

And it was unmistakably Saiyan.

Vegeta sat still as stone, grinding his teeth as his mind raced in panicked circles, trying to swallow this realization. Bulma was still sound asleep, but the energy radiating from her was practically glowing with life. Life he'd created within her. All his befuddled brain managed to sputter was So that's why she's so tired.

"Oh, you stupid fucking idiot." he whispered to himself, and forced his limbs to move. He was out of the room in five seconds flat and locked himself in his bedroom. He stormed to the bathroom and turned the shower on as hot as he could handle and stood under the water, thinking.

She was pregnant. He'd impregnated her with a half-breed. That would explain the likeness to Gohan. Did she know? He was certain she couldn't, she would've said something. She was not very good at disguising her feelings. Vegeta wasn't feeling too confident in that talent either as he couldn't shake the need to either scream or throw up. He leaned against the cold tile of the shower and covered his face with his hands, groaning in frustration.

A half-breed! It was the most despicable display of indecency, a complete lack of self-control. His face burned in shame, feeling a tremendous weight of guilt over the dishonor it brought to his royal line. Or, at least, the dishonor it would've brought if anyone was fucking left. Vegeta closed his eyes, allowing himself to feel a brief but stabbing pain of mourning, nearly overwhelmed by the disgrace he felt now that he was no better than the only other remaining full-blooded member of his race.

There was, however, a small voice in the back of his mind that disturbed his lament, a voice that grew just a little bit braver the closer Vegeta listened. It doesn't matter if your offspring is a half-breed, the voice considered. Your blood will be running through it's veins, stronger than any other race could procure. The Saiyans will live on.

Vegeta shut the water off and shook his hair like a dog before stepping out of the shower. He wrapped a towel around his waist and wiped the recently fixed mirror clean, staring at himself. He was almost thirty-four years old. He'd only ever taken life, he'd never thought himself capable of creating it. He had never even entertained the thought of passing on his name, his blood. There was never a chance. But now...Bulma was carrying his child. His son, he was sure. Saiyans always produced males first, and he couldn't imagine a human's genetics could overtake that. His son. His heir. The sudden immense desire to protect that...to protect them nearly crushed him. He'd never felt the urge to protect anyone other than himself, and that emotion gave him a new sense of purpose, of direction...and of weakness. Crippling weakness.

He'd never permitted anyone to penetrate his barricaded heart the way Bulma had, and he could barely stomach the thought that he actually cared about her. And now there was a child, and if anything happened to either one of them, if he couldn't destroy the androids...well, that'd just be yet another humiliating failure that Vegeta would have no one to blame for but himself. He felt sudden tremendous pressure and frustration, realizing at once that there was barely a year and a half left to prepare and he hadn't even become a flicker of a Super Saiyan. Instead he was blowing up metal robots and screwing his landlord. The shame of it all was only just hitting him now and it nearly drove him mad. He let out a roar, hauled back and slammed his fist into the mirror, shattering it yet again. His arm was embedded deep in the wall and he yanked it out, shaking the debris and broken glass off before stomping out of the room. He knew what he had to do.

Vegeta felt like he couldn't move fast enough. He slipped into his jumpsuit and stuffed his armor into a rucksack. He slung the bag over his shoulder and closed his door behind him. He took two steps and stopped dead in his tracks in front of Bulma's closed door. It was barely 7am, there was no way she'd be awake now. But...something inside him forced him to push the door open. He looked at her, the need to leave conflicting with his need to tell her something, anything. He glanced back to the door, but with a defeated growl he dropped his sack on the floor and put one knee up on the bed, grabbing her shoulders in his gloved hands.

"Wake up and listen to me." He barked, shaking her. Bulma's eyes fluttered and she immediately tried to shove him away.

"Leave me alone!" she snapped, slapping his arms.

"Shut up! Listen, are you listening?" he spat, and Bulma groaned in response, eyes half-lidded and unfocused. "Eat something decent, alright? Lay off the candies and eat a fucking vegetable for once, it won't kill you." Vegeta said. "And stop staying up all night."

"Don't tell me what to do." Bulma grumbled, yanking her arm from his grasp and rolling away from him.

"You are impossible!" Vegeta shouted, and Bulma snored in response. Vegeta sighed in annoyance and reached to her nightstand, grabbing a notepad and pen. He started to write, scratched it out, started to write again, groaned, scratch, scribble, threw the pen down, grabbed his sack off the floor and left, slamming the door behind him. Bulma didn't budge.

Bulma woke up significantly colder than usual. She rolled over and was surprised to see Vegeta wasn't with her, and from the feel of the sheets he hadn't been in awhile. She stretched and got up on her elbows to look at her alarm clock. Her jaw dropped. 12:53?! Holy crap, she hadn't slept that late since she was a teenager. No wonder Vegeta gave up on waiting for her. He was surely at least five hours deep into training by now. She started to get up but something caught her eye on her nightstand. She scooched closer and saw writing scribbled on her notepad. She reached for it and brought it to her face, squinting at it. Was she still half-asleep? This writing looked like some sort of mix of Russian and ancient Egyptian. She studied it for another second before shrugging and tossing the pad on her pillow and getting up. She leisurely showered and dressed, all the while thinking of what she was going to eat because she. was. STARVING. She walked passed Vegeta's closed room without a second thought and jogged down the stairs to the kitchen. She rummaged around the fridge and found leftover lasagna. She dumped it into the microwave and when it started to hum, she realized a different sound was strangely absent. She turned to look out the window at the gravity chamber.

Where the fuck was the gravity chamber.

Bulma dashed outside and whipped her head from side to side, as if Vegeta had just picked it up and moved it ten yards to the right or something. It was gone, leaving nothing but a large circle of flattened yellow grass in its place. Bulma unconsciously clenched her fists. Vegeta wasn't with her when she woke up. The Gravity chamber was also a ship. And the gravity chamber was gone. How nice. She pursed her lips and turned on her heel, heading back inside. She grabbed her cooling lasagna and leaned against the counter, shoveling it in and thinking.

Where the hell did he go? It wasn't that he was gone that concerned her so much, he took off to train all the time. What he didn't do all the time was leave the planet, which was clearly what he'd done now. Did she miss something? Was it May next year already? How long was she asleep?

The note, dingbat.

Bulma's head shot up, and she dumped the plastic container on the counter with a clatter and bounded up the stairs. She slid on the hardwood in her socked feet and stumbled into her room. She swiped the discarded notepad off the unmade bed and looked over it again. It wasn't in some strange hieroglyphic Russian, it was in Saiyan! Bulma smiled in triumph of the solved mystery, but then narrowed her eyes. It was in fucking. Saiyan.

"What am I supposed to do with this, huh!?" she yelled to no one, eyes still crawling over each symbol, trying to dissect it. It was a total of four lines, but 75% of it was scratched out in some fashion, and the last line was the only one left completely intact. Whatever message Vegeta had been trying to convey, he couldn't seem to spit it out. It was strange; he didn't really seem like a note-leaving kind of guy. Was he just telling her he was leaving for awhile? That he was leaving forever? That he-

"Oh god." Bulma's stomach suddenly turned inside out. She clamped her hand over her mouth and ran to the bathroom, falling in front of the toilet just in time to puke her guts out. When she was done she wiped her eyes and caught her breath. Yikes, how old was that lasagna? She stood and flushed before washing her hands and reaching for her toothbrush. She scrubbed her teeth and was just about to leave when she saw her packet of birth control on the counter. It had slipped her mind that morning to take it so she grabbed the pack and pushed one out of the foil. She was about to pop it in her mouth but she noticed something and held the pill just at her lips, looking at the pack. She was just starting week two. Which meant she would've started her period two weeks ago.

She did not start her period two weeks ago.

"Omigod." Bulma dropped the tiny pill on the counter and dropped to her knees, yanking the trash can out of the cupboard and digging through it. Tissues and wrappers went flying until she found her previous packet of pills. She pulled it open and saw she'd taken the whole thing, placebos and all. "Omigod. Omigod. Omigod." she chanted under her breath, almost panting as she threw everything back in the trash and jumped to her feet. She took a moment to hyperventilate, and then ran out of the bathroom. She grabbed her phone off it's cradle and punched the numbers crazily, misdialing twice before finally getting it right. She considered breathing into a paper bag while it rang.

~*~Meanwhile, in the countryside…~*~

Chi Chi had just finished putting the dishes away when the phone rang.

"Hello, Son residence!"

"It's Bulma. Listen, Chi Chi, were you on birth control when you got pregnant with Gohan?"

"Hi Bulma, and yes I was, how did you know?"

"FUCK!" Bulma's voice screamed.

"What-" Chi Chi pulled the phone away from her ear when she was interrupted by a deafening click. "Hello?" she asked, but was answered with a dial tone. She frowned and hung up the phone. "Well, that was rude."

Forty-five minutes and about a gallon of Kool-Aid later Bulma was back in her bathroom, the third pregnancy test sitting on the edge of the sink. She glanced at the time and stopped pacing in circles long enough to check it. She looked the result and chucked it in the garbage with a shaky, half-hearted sigh.

"Oh, you stupid fucking idiot."

Bulma sat down on the toilet lid and dumped her head to her knees. How in the holy name of KING FUCKING KAI did she not notice her missed period? Apparently she was too busy working, too busy inventing, too busy banging Vegeta and getting KNOCKED UP to notice. She sat up and let angry tears well in her eyes. As she pouted, a ping went off in her brain.

He was trying to tell me something this morning.

She remembered Vegeta was right in her face, demanding something of her, but she was too tired and blew him off. She couldn't recall what he'd said, only that he'd looked very intense, which wasn't exactly uncommon. Bulma's eyes widened and she hastily brushed her tears away and replaced her frown with a shocked gape. Did he KNOW? And he LEFT? OH. MY. GOD. Bulma got up and angrily went across the hall and barged into his room. She immediately went for his closet and flung it open, and, just as she suspected, his armor was gone.

"You asshole." she whispered, feeling an unwanted lump grow in her throat. She stormed down to the lab and sat down in front of her computer, grabbing her headset and pulling up the video phone for the gravity chamber-turned-escape-ship. "Vegeta. Answer this phone. NOW!" she yelled into the mic, but was met with only a disconnected buzz. He didn't have communications on, and there was no way she could override it from this distance. She threw her headset across the room and banged her head on the desk. She cried silently for a minute or two before raising her head again. She grabbed a wad of tissues out of the box on her desk and cleaned herself up, leaning back in her chair to catch her breath. Okay, she was Bulma Briefs. She was a smart, logical individual. Think.

Vegeta was gone. That was evident. But was he gone for good? It just felt wrong. Even though Vegeta was aloof, harsh, and downright cruel sometimes, she really felt, in her heart of hearts, he wouldn't desert her this way. If so, she had seriously misjudged him. He was just too brutally straightforward to not own up to this. So, what then?

Where was he?

Please review! Really closing in on it.