Chapter 25:
Two weeks.
That's how late she was.
Two weeks since she should have gotten her period.
She's freaking out. She knows that. Something like panic closing her throat up and making her mouth dry.
She keeps going over the exact date in relation to the last time she and Vegeta had had sex, hoping, stupidly, for some different outcome. Hoping it doesn't keep adding up.
But it does. Horribly it does.
Fuck, she'd forgotten to take her birth control. In her relief at him coming home, she'd fucking forgotten.
She'd told herself to keep it together, to not make any assumptions, to stay calm and patient. But that had been a lost cause, and today she'd finally snapped, going into town and buying every pregnancy test available at the little convenience store she'd walked into.
She stares down at the plastic stick in her hands now, regarding it with an overblown ambivalence, absurdly terrified of it confirming for her what she was already pretty damn certain of.
She's been sitting on the toilet for almost ten minutes straight, holding it in, not wanting to do it.
She knows she has to.
She just doesn't know what she's going to do once she does.
"Please God, don't let me be pregnant." She breathes aloud, finally building enough courage to go through with it.
Waiting for the results feels like holding her breath under water, the anticipation agonizing and fearful.
"You're pregnant" it reads.
Shit.
She goes through each kit, drinking stupid amounts of water along the way. Each result is the same.
"Oh God, I'm pregnant..." she breathes, dropping the last test into the trash bin.
The initial wave of panic has receded now into an odd feeling of numb resignation, except for when she allows herself to contemplate what the reaction is going to be when she tells Vegeta.
Or her parents.
Or anyone else.
Oh good God, she doesn't want to even think about it.
For a moment, the thought of an abortion flashes through her mind, only as quickly as it comes, it's replaced by a feeling of overwhelming disgust at herself and a sense of crushing guilt.
She couldn't do that to Vegeta.
She still can't get the image out of her mind of the look on his face when he'd asked her if she wanted him to leave, after revealing to her that he'd killed other men while out there in space.
He'd looked so much like a lost little boy. Like a child who had never really had a home, and was resigned to the fact that he never would.
Bulma couldn't lie by telling herself that his killing didn't bother her. It did. It really did.
When he'd told her he'd been out there taking lives, said it so casually, and when he'd said he was good at it, she'd felt for a moment like she was going to vomit, her stomach churning in anxious nausea and fear.
The men he'd killed were, she knew, probably bad men. And that thought gave her some comfort. But she knew also, deep down, that he had killed many people who were innocent, who hadn't at all deserved it, and when he told her he had killed, good men or bad, it only served to remind her of that fact. Remind her that he was, in truth, a killer, just like everyone said, like he himself said. Reminding her, too, that she had willingly chosen to take up with a man like him.
Thoughts like that also weighed her down with an awful sense of guilt. Thoughts which relegated him to a single, narrow definition. A killer. A murderer. When she knew he was so much more than that. When she knew, beyond all of it, he was a good man.
"What proof do you have that he's a good person Bulma?" She can hear Yamcha asking her, his voice incredulous and irritated.
That was the problem. She didn't really have any proof, beyond what she could sense in her own heart. She didn't doubt her feelings for a moment, and the way Vegeta was with her was proof enough, she thought. But for others, they would need more. They saw Vegeta as selfish and arrogant and extremely dangerous. Even her own parents, whom she had assumed felt the same way about him that she did, had proven otherwise, Dad especially. They accepted Vegeta and welcomed him into their home, of course, and she knew they both were genuinely fond of him. But they too had their doubts and fears that he was unstable and could snap at any moment, go back to the way he had been when he'd first arrived on Earth.
She couldn't blame them. Not entirely. Vegeta had serious problems, that made only more evident to her with each day she spent around him. He was damaged, mentally unwell, those scars, she more than suspected, running far deeper than any physical scars marring his body.
And that was the problem here too. She has no idea how he's going to react to hearing she's carrying his child. Has no idea what kind of a father he would even make.
Logic tells her probably not a very good one.
That thought again makes her feel guilty, knowing she's making assumptions about him the same as everyone else.
Only she couldn't afford to be naive or stupid about this either. It wasn't just Vegeta she had to worry about in this situation, it was the baby too, assuming she went through with it.
She finds herself having a difficult time envisioning Vegeta as ever being stable or reliable enough to make a dependable, supportive father. The way he was constantly disappearing for days and weeks, even months at a time. His outbursts of temper and violence. His mental and emotional trauma.
Exposing a child to that kind of volatile and unpredictable environment didn't just seem like a naive endeavor. It seemed downright irresponsible, even dangerous.
Bulma was a grown woman, capable of making her own judgments and decisions. She knew what Vegeta was and what kind of a man she was getting involved with when she'd decided to pursue a relationship with him.
A baby couldn't do that. A baby would have no choice, no say in the matter.
Vegeta hadn't meant to hurt her that one time when he'd sprained her wrist, she knows that. But what if he had a similar loss of control around an infant? Lost control of his strength with a baby the same way he had with her, even for just a moment?
It would be an unrivaled disaster, she thinks. Would very likely end in tragedy.
She didn't think she could ever forgive herself, if she allowed herself to have this child and then let something like that happen to it. Let Vegeta somehow, even if only accidentally, hurt it.
Only thinking all this makes her ill with self-disgust and an almost suffocating sense of hypocrisy. She'd been ranckling inside for more than a year now over the treatment of all of her friends towards Vegeta, at their judgments and rejections of him. And here she was, doing the exact same thing, allowing her fear to spiral into an awful, nearly consuming doubt, making assumptions about him and his abilities, about his capacity for change. Allowing her fear to impact the trust she'd begun to build with him, the trust she felt towards him...
It would break his heart, she thinks, if he knew the kinds of terrible thoughts she was struggling with now.
How much worse would her betrayal be then, if she were to abort his baby without him ever even knowing about it?
If she did, and he ever did find out, she knows, that would be the end of their relationship. The trust she'd worked so hard to build between them would be shattered.
No, she thinks again, that wasn't an option. It just wasn't.
In a way, she realizes, that made her decision an easy one. She wasn't getting an abortion. Not getting an abortion meant there was no use in trying to keep it a secret. She had to tell Vegeta, before anyone.
It was figuring out how she was going to do that that was going to be the hard part.
/
There's a numb tingling sensation shooting through to her extremities, her mouth unbearably dry as she stands outside Vegeta's bedroom door. It's nerves. She's nervous.
She doesn't quite know how she's going to do this.
She'd gone to the doctor, just to absolutely confirm what she already knew.
She was pregnant alright. Four weeks, the doctor had told her.
That had been the final barrier keeping her from confronting the issue with Vegeta. She had no excuses now.
That failed to make her resolve any firmer.
She'd been procrastinating all day since getting back home. Finding any and every excuse not to come up here and talk to her boyfriend. Occupying herself with trivial, unnecessary tasks. She'd started cleaning up and organizing her lab, for crying out loud. She never bothered with things like that. Mom or Dad were always the ones who came in and kept the place up.
It was when she'd begun alphabetizing her text books that she'd realized what she was doing.
Stop being such a coward Bulma, she'd told herself, forcing herself at last to stop screwing around. Still, the march up to Vegeta's room had been slow and painfully ambivalent.
She's been standing outside his door for nearly five minutes, frozen, her mind racing with different scenarios of how this was going to go, what she was going to say, how she was going to broach what she needed to tell him.
Vegeta's door is cracked ajar, and she's shaken from her hesitation by the sudden sound of his voice, a low murmur like he's talking to himself, too quiet for her to really make out what he's saying. She turns her head closer, straining her ears to listen.
His speech is stilted, she notices, stopping and starting and stopping again, and as she steps nearer, she can at last make out the frustration in his tone, the irritated sighs between words.
Curiosity gets the better of her then, her reason for coming up here momentarily forgotten as she presses herself against the hallway wall outside his room, turning and peering through the crack in his door, into his room.
She sees Vegeta sitting cross legged there on the floor, wearing nothing but a pair of training shorts, scar riddled torso exposed, the angry red/pink of his most recent wound glaring from just above his hip, tearing along his side to disappear around to his back. There's an open book in his lap, his head bent over it in concentration. The sight is almost incongruous, with his stout, powerfully muscular frame and giant hands holding the flimsy looking paperback, a strange, almost sad awkwardness to the image.
He's reading to himself, she realizes after a few, long seconds. Reading aloud.
As she listens, that awkwardness only makes itself more understandable to her, and she feels her heart sink in almost crushing sadness.
He's reading from one of her trashy romance novels she often left lying around the house. Or, he's trying to. Only he's struggling. Struggling badly. It's becoming more and more evident as the seconds go by that he barely can read at all.
She didn't know.
How could she have not known?
It had never occurred to her, the thought never crossing her mind. He'd never shown any indication that he couldn't read, never seeming to really struggle the way she thought a person who was illiterate might.
Only when she thinks back, as always seemed to be the case, there were signs which stood out. His temper flaring when she'd tried lending some of her text books to him, the fact he never seemed interested in reading the morning paper, or using the internet, despite his obvious fascination with it as a concept. The fact that he occupied almost all of his time training, and never really anything else. She'd assumed that was just obsessiveness on his part, a drive to be the best, but now, realizing what she did, she thinks it might also be because he simply had nothing else to distract him, nothing else to do. Recalling further, she realizes she'd never seen him write anything down, never even sign his name to anything, and she wonders suddenly if he can even spell it.
She'd never even stopped to wonder about his education. She'd assumed it had been thorough, and good, considering he was legitimate royalty. All the nobility she knew of from her world had always been highly educated, and she'd simply assumed the same was true for Vegeta. But when she stops to truly think about it, about the kind of life he's had, working as essentially a slave under Frieza's rule, a life of brutal violence and cruelty and desperation, a life of just trying to survive day to day, it only made sense that he would never have been given the opportunity to indulge in more academic studies.
"... He... her beat... her beat... I... ful... her beatiful f... face..." he pauses, huffing in frustration again. She can see his hands gripping the book too tightly now, trembling slightly in irritated anger. Bulma's heart sinks further watching the display. He's trying so hard, and it's awful to watch. He starts up again suddenly, moving, it seems, to a different sentence. "... He tt... took her... he took her I... en h-hiss... hiss a-airms... airms... and... and k-kis... kiss-ed her pp-ppas... pass...
Damn it!" He snaps, tossing the book down.
Bulma watches in dismay as his head drops into his hands, shoulders slumping, entire form resigned. Giving up. Bulma had never see Vegeta give up on anything, the sight heartbreaking, upsetting.
She feels herself hesitating, not knowing what to do.
She knew Vegeta and his pride well enough at this point to know he wouldn't react well to being caught struggling like this, with anything. But knowing now about this, she doesn't think she could just stand by and continue to let him go on like this either. To let him go on at such an awful disadvantage. To not be able to read or write... she couldn't even imagine what that must be like.
And then there was the matter of why she had come up to see him in the first place.
An idea occurs to her then, a possible way to both help Vegeta and break the news to him that she was pregnant with his child.
It was a risk, she knows. Could backfire easily. But it was maybe also a way to build an even greater sense of trust between them, a way to galvanize their relationship together.
She waits a few moments longer before finally taking a deep breath, lifting her hand and knocking lightly on the door.
There's no response from inside the room for several seconds, and then she hears Vegeta shifting around, several seconds more before the door swings suddenly all the way open, his small, compact frame blocking her view into the room as he looks back at her. There's an open nervousness in his eyes for a moment, and she knows he's afraid she's heard him struggling to read to himself. It makes her hesitate a moment longer, before she forces herself to smile at him, leaning in and pressing a quick kiss to his cheek.
"Hey." She greets, pulling back.
He nods at her after a moment, his normal manner of saying hello.
He hesitates again a moment.
"What are you up to?" She asks finally, bracing herself.
Another beat before she shakes his head.
"Nothing." He answers flatly, falling silent again.
Bulma swallows, licking her lips, her stomach knotting with fresh nerves.
"Can I come in?" She asks.
For an instant she sees him stiffen, before he gives a jerky nod, moving aside to give her space.
Moving past him into the room, she sees the book he'd tossed to the floor is gone now, hidden away somewhere.
Somehow, that only makes her feel worse.
She stands there as she listens to him close the door, moving past her a moment later, lifting a tank top off the back of a chair and pulling it over his head, sitting down on the edge of his mattress and looking back at her expectantly.
He nods at the chair.
"Sit down." He says, and Bulma complies, lowering herself into the seat, the same, uncomfortable silence filling the space.
He keeps looking back at her, his black eyes as always unsettling intense, and Bulma feels her courage failing her a moment.
She wishes he would say something, start the conversation maybe.
Oh, fuck it.
"I heard you reading to yourself." She says. There was no point in beating around the bush. Not really.
Immediately she sees him stiffen, his eyes widening in surprise before they skitter away from her, staring pointedly away.
He says nothing, only she can see the awful tension in his frame, the way he's holding himself so suddenly still and awkward. He's embarrassed, clearly, humiliated even. That wasn't at all her intention and she knows she has to make him understand that, or this whole thing could turn quickly into a disaster.
"Vegeta, you should have told me. It's alright. It's nothing to be ashamed of. There are so many people who can't read or write, and it's got nothing to do with their intelligence. It's purely circumstantial. But it makes life a lot harder. I know you must be suffering because of it."
He doesn't say anything, still not looking at her, and Bulma feels a slight wave of panic.
"I want to help you. I can help you learn to read better, and write too."
"I don't need your help." He finally says, voice clipped and angry, almost too soft to hear. He still won't look at her.
"Okay. I understand that." She replies calmly. She can't get mad, or desperate. "But will you let me help you?"
Still he doesn't reply. But he doesn't say no either, which Bulma can only take to be a good sign. If she's careful, maybe she can make this work.
"Listen, I know how frustrating it is when you have a problem in front of you that you can't solve. It happens to me constantly. I think maybe you're starting out with books that are a little too difficult. I'm not saying you aren't smart enough to read them Vegeta. You're incredibly smart, and I can say that with total confidence. But if you've never had the basics of a thing taught to you, or had any kind of foundation to build off of, you can't just delve right in to the deep end and expect to be able to swim. You know what I mean?"
Again he doesn't answer, holding himself so stiffly she can practically see his tensed muscles trembling with the strain.
Maybe this hadn't been the best idea, she thinks, the panic threatening to surge up again.
"... I only want to help you Vegeta." She says quietly, losing hope.
"I thought you knew." He says suddenly, voice equally soft, the hostility gone from it.
Bulma blinks at him, not understanding.
"I'm sorry?" She says.
"I thought you knew already." He repeats, finally looking at her.
"... Oh." Bulma says, realizing what he means. "Oh, I..."
He looks away again, arms folding painfully tight across his chest, shoulders hunched up. Defensive, ashamed looking.
"I didn't know." Bulma admits after a moment. "I never had any reason to think..."
"Well now you do." He cuts her off sharply, angry again. "You can stop pretending to think I'm so smart then. I don't know why you do that. I don't know why you try to make me out to be more than I am."
Is that what he thought? That she was paying him false compliments? Gods, she never...
Her head shakes, upset.
"Vegeta I don't. I don't." She repeats at his incredulous look. "I mean what I say to you. Please believe me."
"Is that the reason why you no longer suggest taking me out into public?" He shoots back sharply. "Why you no longer have your little friends over when I'm here? I'm not as stupid as all that Bulma. I know I embarrass you."
Bulma's mouth comes open to retort. To argue. To tell him he's wrong.
Only she stops. She can't tell him that. She can't because it would be a lie.
She is embarrassed by Vegeta, a little. Fuck, it's horrible but it's true, and it was ironic that she was telling him now how smart he was while all the while assuming he wouldn't be able to see her own hesitation in announcing them as a couple. She was unintentionally undermining his own intelligence by doing so.
He shrugs, turning away from her again.
"You don't need to say anything." He says softly. "It doesn't matter. I am what I am. No one has ever felt superior having me at their side. You would be a fool to feel otherwise"
God, hearing him talk about himself like this... It wasn't at all how Bulma had wanted this to go, her heart heavy and pained. Trying to lie to him, to placate him, she thinks, would be the worst move now.
"You're right." She finally just admits, and he looks at her, only vague surprise in his features. "Vegeta, I'm not going to lie to you and say that I'm not a little worried about taking you out in public, or even worried about what other people are going to think of you, or me because I've chosen to be with you. I'm not a perfect person, and I have moments of weakness and selfishness just like everyone else. But you have to believe me, please believe me Vegeta, when I tell you that despite my own failings there, despite my sometimes selfish, childish fears, everything I say to you is true. Every compliment I've paid you, my admiration for you, it's all real. I'm not lying, or just trying to stroke your ego, or make you feel better when I say those things. I say them because I mean them and I think, with as smart as you are, you know that too. I'm not the kind of person that can be forced into saying or doing anything that I don't really want or believe in."
She pauses, taking a deep breath.
Maybe trying to ease into this wasn't going to work. Maybe the best way to deal with it was just to say it outright, and let the chips fall where they may. Maybe, somehow, that would be the ultimate show of trust towards him.
"I want to help you Vegeta. I can help you learn to read and write better, if that's something you're interested in. If you aren't, that's okay too, and I promise you I won't ever think less of you for it. I don't think less of you now that I know. It's up to you. It's an open offer. If you want help, just tell me, and I'll be there. If not, alright."
He's watching her intently now, expression careful and controlled. As usual, she can't really tell what he's thinking at all.
"Look," she goes on after a long moment of silence. "I came here to tell you something. Something you need to know."
She falters, voice fading off a moment as her nerves come raging back, her mouth going suddenly dry, the tips of her fingers tingling with anxious worry.
Oh God, she just had to say it. There was no point in this.
He shifts, turning more fully towards her, his attention fully on her. He can see her fear, she thinks. It's making him nervous.
It was now or never then. She had to say it. Had to tell him...
"What?" He asks when she fails to speak. "What?" He asks again, more emphatically, tone tight with tension.
Her eyes fill with tears and God she doesn't even know why, her head shaking. Blood rushing in her ears as her heart beats too hard in her chest.
"Vegeta..." she says, voice trembling, hot tears slipping, falling down her cheeks.
He stands, taking a step towards her, stopping. He's staring at her like she's just told him the world is going to end. She's scared him. That wasn't what she meant to do. Couldn't let that go on.
She swallows past the tightness in her throat, mouth opening.
"Vegeta," she says his name again. "... I'm pregnant."
/
AN: Again, thank you to all my readers and reviewers! I hope you continue to enjoy!