Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ, the characters, or the song "I Don't Know You Anymore" by Savage Garden
You guys get two chapters today because I didn't want to leave off on last one. Enjoy!
It had been about a week since the media started with the story that could potentially ruin her marriage and life, and Bulma was still no closer to deciding how to handle it. Both Kalina and Panchy had tried to reason with her, begged her to go home and talk to Vegeta. She couldn't do that right now. As irrational as it was, she needed space. She was angry, and she needed to cool down before hashing anything out with Vegeta. Concern for her father also kept her away. Vegeta would not understand it after all he put her through, and she was not going to explain herself to him.
She expressed her concern to her mother, told the woman what the vice president had said to her face. Panchy was certain that the man was lying, and she assured Bulma that she would check on the man and figure out the real story.
As promised, she went across the street and let herself into the house. She found her husband in the kitchen, head in his hands while he was surrounded by papers and many beer cans. Already, Panchy was worried. Her husband was never a beer drinker, nor did he ever binge drink…ever. He didn't have the stomach for it after watching his father consume his weight in whiskey.
For the day, she took care of him, Dr. Briefs thinking her to be a hallucination every step of the way. He was completely stressed and falling apart, and he was actually thanking her every time she did something nice for him like getting him cleaned up, showered, and dressed. She made him go to bed, and he thanked her one more time and actually told her that he loved her and wished she was really there. It had been years since she heard those words, and for the longest time Panchy didn't believe he still cared for her. A part of her wondered if he was really changing or if it were the alcohol talking. Well, it didn't hurt to find out. Besides, she did miss sleeping in her own bed. That was still allowed, right?
Meanwhile, Bulma had to get out of the house. She decided to take Trunks to the park, her son completely oblivious to the fact that something horrible was occurring around him. It had broken Bulma's heart when Trunks came over to her, handing her a rock, while saying, "Papa." Trunks wanted to give his father the strangely-shaped rock, and it made everything more confusing and devastating.
The woman couldn't help but wonder if Vegeta was still the same man she fell in love with or if he had truly changed when she had fled. She knew his anger had skyrocketed after she left. He had admitted as much to her, and she knew he had wanted to make her pay. She gasped. Panicked and pregnant, she was caught in the horrid thought that this was his revenge to punish her for what she had done.
Rationality, thankfully, took over once again.
That had to be the hormones talking like the last time. They made her feel things that weren't true. She knew because Vegeta had opened up to her much more since that whole ordeal. He wouldn't have made himself more vulnerable if he was planning to destroy her.
Bulma needed to talk to Vegeta, immediately, needed to see him. She was ready, and calm enough, to hear what he had to say.
Her phone rang just as she was getting Trunks cleaned up and ready to go. She was surprised to see that Goku was calling her. "Hey, Goku. What's up?"
"Go home, Bulma, please," Goku frantically called.
Bulma's eyes widened, her heart almost freezing inside of her. "Why? Goku, what's wrong?"
"I don't know!" the man shouted. "One of Vegeta's employees called me as an emergency contact because they couldn't get in touch with you all week. Vegeta hasn't been showing up to work or answering his calls. The company is in disarray. They sent someone over to the house, and Vegeta didn't answer there either."
The panic Bulma felt was making her feel ill, but she knew she needed to get her and Trunks back home. She swallowed, hoping to quell the queasiness, and assured Goku she was heading there now.
She hurried home and raced inside to the best of her abilities when dealing with a fussy one-year-old. Trunks was probably feeding off of her anxiety like the baby inside her. She managed to get inside and found the place unusually quiet and neat. The kitchen appeared unused, like it hadn't been used for days. The living room was as she left it. Bulma then wandered upstairs to put Trunks in the playpen of his room and, on her way, found wrappers of energy bars in the halls. She put two and two together and realized Vegeta wasn't eating.
It was starting to make her grow even more fearful of what she might find. Bulma held herself together enough to get Trunks settled in his room, the baby boy's eyes matching hers in color and concern. "It's okay, baby. You just play here. I'm going to go check on daddy."
"Papa?" Trunks repeated, brow furrowing. His voice became more of a demand. "Papa."
"I know you want Papa right now," Bulma cooed, "but Papa is resting. Just play for a little bit while I go check on him, and when he wakes up I'll bring you to him."
Trunks pouted, but he said nothing else as he picked up one of his toys. He glared at the musical machine and looked ready to throw it, but then he set it down and started hitting buttons. Bulma sighed in relief before leaving the room and going to her own. She looked at the wrappers again and shook her head. She remembered a time where he had done something like this once before, one week when they were young. Vegeta had been so stressed because he had given into one of his father's demands, firing the widowed single-father of three children whose mourning had been "bad for business." He had skipped meals for a few days, eating only energy bars to sustain himself, claiming it was enough despite his growling stomach and nausea. He had barely had any water either causing him to become severely dehydrated, and he would exercise until he blacked out. When his legs had given out at school when she was alone with him, she had been so worried, and he swore he'd never do that to himself again. If he was doing it now, had he done this to himself the first time she left?
Fear poured into her when she found their room empty, and she practically ran to their home gym and found her husband unconscious looking horribly beat up. She nearly shrieked, but swallowed it down as she threw herself down next to him, lightly patting his cheek and calling his name frantically. For a moment, she thought he was dead.
A ragged breath released, and Bulma sobbed against him. "Vegeta," she whimpered, feeling terrible for having driven him to this. She had only needed some time to cool down and think. She didn't think he'd take her note to mean he was really leaving her even though her thoughts did wander down the road of a ruined marriage. "Vegeta, please. Please wake up. You need to wake up."
"F-Fuck…" he breathed out. "…O-Off…"
"Vegeta?" Bulma questioned, hesitant, thinking he was talking to her.
"G-Go to hell, old man," he growled.
Bulma sighed in relief. "Oh, Vegeta," she cooed. "I'm not your father. It's me, Bulma."
"Bullshit," he hissed, barely opening his eyes. They widened only a fraction when he saw her. "S-Shit…you're he- No! No, you're nothing but a figment. You're not here."
"Yes, I am, you stupid man," she admonished as he tried to fight her. She managed to block a hit to her gut. "Hey, cut it out! You're going to hit the baby!"
Vegeta immediately stopped, his eyes wide with terror. He glanced down at her stomach and stopped fighting. This vision was still that, but what if it were real? He didn't want to risk it. "I'm sorry," he weakly said. "This is all my fault. I should have told you about Cooler."
Bulma grimaced. "So you did make a deal with him…"
"No!" he hurriedly cried. "Listen, please… He did invite me for drinks a while back, asked me if I wanted to take down Capsule. Your father called him saying he wanted Arco to drop our deal and make one with him, and so he asked if I wanted to retaliate. I said 'no,' Bulma. I didn't want to do this rivalry shit anymore, but I fucked up. I didn't tell you because I didn't think it important. Arco said he'd respect my wishes. He lied…"
The visage of his wife was about to speak, but Vegeta continued. "And now you don't even want to be with me. You left me again." His voice broke as he choked on a sob. "I can only see you and explain all this to you as a hallucination. Bulma, I want you back so much. I fucking need you…"
Tears entered Bulma's eyes, and she reached out to him, but Vegeta turned away. "You don't fucking know how much, damn it. I never told you shit. I took you for granted so many times. I just assumed you'd always be there. Bulma, I love you. You're the only being on this planet that ever made me feel like more than Vegeta's bastard son, more than just a future drone of the company. My father wanted me to be his puppet, wanted to control me. I almost let him. He turned me against you!"
"What do you mean, Vegeta?"
"The day we met at the park," Vegeta whimpered. "We were five. I wanted to be your friend, but I pushed you down instead because I couldn't get up the nerve to ask you to play on the slide with me." Bulma vaguely remembered that day, and she was confused as to why Vegeta was bringing it up. "You got mad and hit me back, and then we both laughed at our mothers yelling at us. We played for hours, and then we went home and I told my dad about it.
"He told me I was never to play with you again if I ever saw you because you were Dr. Briefs daughter. I didn't know or care what that meant, but he told me you were poisonous and you'd hurt and betray me if you ever got the chance. He told me that you were this monster, and I told him I thought you were nice and pretty. He said I'd see, and I thought he was right because the next time I saw you, you wouldn't even look at me."
Bulma frowned as she tried to remember when she was five, and her eyes softened. "Oh…Vegeta, it wasn't you. My grandpa had died that week. Mom brought me to the park to distract me, but I was having trouble dealing with it."
Vegeta barely listened to the hallucination. "It doesn't matter. I treated you like shit after that, and I kept the rivalry going. When I first started falling for you, those days haunted me. I desperately wanted to make up for it all, for letting my father manipulate me into believing all those lies.
"You make me feel like I actually have worth, that I wasn't just a mistake," he confessed in his delirious state. "You gave me a purpose and love, and I took it all for granted."
"That's not true, Vegeta," Bulma argued, but to no avail.
"I fucked up," he repeated again. "It's my fault. I did this to us. Being away from you and Trunks makes me feel so much pain, pain I didn't even know I can feel. I did this to myself, to all of us. It would have been better if I never existed."
Bulma almost slapped Vegeta for saying that, but ended up kissing him instead. She was brought to tears by his tirade, and she had to do something to prove to the man that she was real. Vegeta was amazed that he could feel the woman, now realizing that she wasn't a hallucination. He wasn't dreaming. Oh, thank God he wasn't dreaming. She was really there.
He pulled away to beg her forgiveness, trying to form his desperate apology. "No," Bulma said to him, making his expression fall. "I don't want an apology. This wasn't your fault, Vegeta. None of it was."
Her brow furrowed and her voice cracked as she admitted, "I'm the one who messed everything up." Vegeta was about to argue, but Bulma covered his mouth to prevent him from doing so. "I was the one who hid us. I took us for granted. I wronged you and hurt you so many times. I was selfish, Vegeta, even when I left you here after our relationship went public.
"You always did everything to make my life worth living," she admitted. "My father tore me down all the time, and you always went out of your way to pick me up. You loved me so much that you made so many sacrifices, stood up to your father for us, and was scorned with awful words just because you wanted to be with me. And I couldn't do the same for you? I feel like such a bitch because of that. I screwed up our relationship when I ran. I'm the one who is responsible for all your pain, including this past week. I should have let you explain. I was just mad and didn't want to deal with it yet in case, in my hormonal haze, I'd say something to hurt you worse than I already have.
"I'm sorry, Vegeta, for the time I hit you at the park, from the time I lied to the teacher and told her you copied my homework, for the times I spread rumors about you in school or said hateful things to your face. I'm sorry that I was just as bad as my father was to yours, that I helped create our rift, that I couldn't own up to our relationship. I'm sorry that I made the best man in the world feel like shit and inferior because I was a coward. I'm the brat that pushed you away. I made you suffer. I'm a monster. I don't deserve you... My father was right! I am worthless! Please forgive me!"
Bulma broke down, sobbing out all of her pain and guilt, berating herself for doing this all to him, and Vegeta just watch…stunned, amazed that Bulma had been holding onto all this guilt from the beginning of their friendship and relationship to the point where she believed her father's words and thought she didn't deserve him. He could see it now, why she never believed one hundred percent all the good things he promised her. All this time, she found herself unworthy of his love, trust, and affections. She believed him to be too good for her, thought he was the best person she knew. His heart almost shattered when she whispered, "I was always afraid you'd see me for the horrible person I truly was, that you'd leave me. After everything I've done to you, you have every right. I'm not worth the effort. I'm nothing but a piece of-"
"For God's sake, Bulma, shut up," Vegeta growled, crashing his lips to hers to silence her negative words. He swallowed her sobs, holding her close to him. He had never known she had felt this way, never knew that the most wonderful and loving woman he knew could harbor such self-hatred. He pulled away to say, "I forgave you for leaving, woman, but all that other bullshit is untrue. You are my angel. You make it sound like you ruined my life. You made my life. You pulled me into the light when I could have gone down all the wrong paths. I promise you…I will never stop trying to show you your worth, how precious you are to me. Bulma, talk to me if you ever feel like running away again. We'll figure it all out together, all of it. We always do, you fucking idiot."
Bulma's laugh broke through her sobs at the empty insult. She nodded in agreement, finally relaxing against Vegeta, her outburst and worry having been too emotionally taxing for her. The two lied on the floor together for about an hour before Bulma offered to make Vegeta soup. He accepted the offer and followed her, first into Trunks's room to find him asleep on the floor, and then downstairs after they put their son to bed.
Once Vegeta was fed, and the two were finally on the same page, they started to brainstorm ways to make things right between the companies. There had to be a way to salvage everything before they both fell.