Author's Note: Hmm, seem to have hit a wall with available writing time. Anyhoo, here's The Rescue Part one. I will post part two tomorrow with luck. As I was finishing it off I realised that it was a massive chapter, and I may as well break it down and post the more finished half.

They didn't linger at Korin's but brought their dinner back with them and spent the evening reviewing their rescue plan in the light of the N-clipper. Bulma examined the other N-clipper and longed to strip it to find out how it worked, but was afraid that she wouldn't be able to put it back together before morning. Finally there was nothing left to do.

'Guess it's bed time then,' said Bulma unhappily, as they climbed down the step ladder from the cockpit of the machine. Vegeta froze in front of her on the last step of the ladder.

'What is it?' she said, feeling her frayed nerves coming undone all over again.

'Nothing,' he said, relaxing again. She followed his gaze to the sofa and the mattress, now both pushed up against the wall. Eighteen sat on the end of the sofa and hunched down next to her was Sixteen. They had been talking quietly most of the evening, but now Eighteen broke off the conversation to give Vegeta the evil eye again. Bulma snorted with bitter amusement. Was Eighteen only just figuring out now that Vegeta was leaving? She seemed pretty pissed off about it too. Why would she care that much? Unless she was feeling outrage on Bulma's behalf - which would be amusing in a way. Bulma grimaced - if Eighteen knew the half of it…

A wave of cold fear washed over her and made her hands prickle with sweat as she remembered her pregnancy.

'One crisis at a time. Bulma,' she told herself, pushing down thoughts of the future.

They slipped into their nightly going-to-bed routine, a well-oiled machine after weeks of practice together. Bulma tried to cheer herself with the thought that this was last time she'd have to stand outside a toilet while someone else used it with the door open. This was heartening, but not nearly enough to raise her above a weary sulk.

They went back to the hangar and evicted Eighteen from the sofa. Bulma immediately knew that sleep would be elusive tonight. She was anxious about tomorrow, and she was miserable about Vegeta. Her last hours with him were ticking away, to be spent lying next to him silently, not even sleeping, and there was nothing to be done about it. She lay rigid on her back, getting more and more wound up.

On one hand she was desperate for morning to arrive and finally get into the machine before anything else could go wrong. On the other…

It felt like tonight should be some grand cathartic moment, a night of confession and tearful farewells. Instead it was just this awful sense of time sliding by, wasted. Eventually she could take it no longer and she rolled onto her side on the sofa. If there would be no farewells and no sleep either, then she would just spend the time looking at him. When she looked over the side of the sofa though he turned his head towards her, his eyes open. It was too dark in the hangar to see his expression clearly, but she could see his eyes gleaming. They stared at each other, Bulma's heart beating louder and louder in her ears. She couldn't stand it, being apart from him, and soon forever. She reached out her hand towards him. He took it and propped himself on his other elbow, putting his face close to hers. He was breathing ragged as he opened his mouth to speak.

'Get a room already!' said Eighteen's mocking voice.

'That does it!' snarled Vegeta, and he leapt to his feet, flinging his pillow at Eighteen clear across the hangar. He threw it with such terrific speed that it caught her by surprise and knocked a cry out of her as it exploded into an enormous cloud of feathers.

Eighteen sputtered, spitting feathers. 'You suck, Vegeta!'

'What about you, Sixteen?' he spat. 'Got any nuggets of judgement to pass down on me tonight?'

Bulma could just make out Sixteen's shape in the dark. 'No. I do not envy you,' he said solemnly. 'Your hand was forced.'

'Bah!' He growled at them, throwing himself back down on the mattress, muttering about sanctimonious robots, and the mood of a minute ago was shattered.

Bulma sat up, desperate to know what he had been about to say before Eighteen's interruption.

'Why don't we just go to the house?' she said quietly. 'So we don't have to disturb Eighteen's beauty sleep?'

'Fine' he said, snatching up the mattress with its sheets and blankets.

Feeling conflicted she grabbed her own sheets and pillow and followed him back into the house. There they made the beds. Bulma still had two pillows. She passed Vegeta one and he stood there between the two beds, holding it, eyes on the floor.

Shit. She felt suddenly foolish with her wish for the heart to heart talk she'd led them in here for. She wanted him to tell her that he had loved her all along, and would miss her forever, but how would that ever happen? The only thing likely to happen between them alone in this room was that the undying embers of their attraction would burst into flame again, and she didn't know if she wanted that, not now that she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was leaving her to go back to his true wife.

He raised his eyes to hers and Bulma felt an uncomfortable blush creeping up on her. She saw the same conflict in him that she felt in herself.

She had plenty of time to stop him, but she was paralysed by indecision as he leant forward in slow, inexorable motion to press his lips to hers. Lust and shame blossomed through her like wine laced with poison. He tossed the pillow on her bed and then slowly pushed her back down next to it. He kissed her, running his hand through her hair, then kissed her face, kissed her throat, kissed her in desperation, and each touch burned with passion and indictment; each touch took a little of her self worth away.

But she didn't want it to feel like this!

'No!' she said, trying to push him away, struggling under the weight of him. He rose up on his knees above her and he hesitated for a second. Then his face twisted in pain. He pulled her up off the bed, pressing her to him hard - too hard - burying his face in her neck and sobbing 'Bulma!' This wasn't like last night, or any other night with him – this was different, and her skin crawled with shame at the feel of his lips on her throat.

'No!' she yelped, trying to pull away from him again. 'Get off me!'

He dropped her as suddenly as he'd grabbed her, and he roared, a sound of frustration and despair that was shockingly loud in the small room. Bulma backed up against the wall, half wishing she hadn't stopped him.

He tore his gaze from her and stared to the side, keeping his eyes down, his face stern as he asked 'What then are we here for?'

'I don't know! Not for this! It's not right – not now that you're going home to her tomorrow!'

'I feel as much for you as for her! You are her!'

'But I'm not her! We're not the same!' she cried, and the last bit slipped out without her meaning it to. 'You picked her over me!'

He clenched his jaw. 'There is no other choice.'

'No, of course there isn't. You've got history, kids, blah, blah.'

He turned away, picking up his pillow and throwing himself down on the trundle bed. He covered his head with his pillow and crossed his arms over the top. Bulma pressed her hands to her mouth to stop herself from crying. This had been a disaster. She got into bed and turned the light out and the silence rolled over her, chokingly.

'I just thought,' she said eventually, 'that we could say our goodbyes in private where we didn't have to worry about what the other two thought.'

She heard him lift the pillow off his face. 'Goodbye, Bulma.'

That was more than a little crushing. But really, was there any more to say?

'Goodbye, Vegeta.'

But Vegeta did have one more thing to say, his voice sounding strangled.

'Gogeta was right. My heart is not cut out for time travel.'

She wanted to agree, but she couldn't talk. She turned her face into her pillow tried to muffle her heartbreak in it. She had told him that having him for a little while was worth whatever pain it cost her. Well now it was time to pay the piper.

She dreamt that Trunks was a baby, and she had lost him. She ran around her parent's house, calling his name and searching everywhere. Now and then she heard his baby giggles, or saw a flash of his chubby leg as he crawled round a corner. She chased him down the stairs and through the kitchen, somehow never being fast enough to catch him, becoming frantic as she saw the door to the garden was open and he was in the flowerbeds. She pushed through the rose bushes, getting caught on their thorns, and tearing the skin of her arms and hands as she pursued him, but he was shrinking! He was the size of her fist, and small enough that he could hide behind plant pots. Then he was the size of a mouse, and she was looking for him under rocks, leaves, petals, screaming his name, terrified that one false step and she'd crush the life out of her baby…

The panic of the dream transmuted directly into stomach-clenching anticipation as she woke. Vegeta was already awake, sitting up on the trundle bed and leaning against the wall. Adrenalin washed through her as she remembered that today was the day – they would head out into the dangerous river of time and find her child at last! She didn't waste time slowly coming to consciousness like she usually did. She got up, chose her clothes and paused at the door with her back to the room while Vegeta rifled his meagre wardrobe. When he was done she led the way into the bathroom. She showered, and then once Vegeta took his turn in the shower she dressed, hands shaking with nervousness.

She spotted the ball of bloodstained, scorched and torn clothes in the corner where Vegeta had tossed them after he came back from the fight with Goku. His boots were split and burnt too. Unwearable.

'Your boots are ruined Vegeta.'

'I know.'

'What will you wear?'

There was a pause from behind the shower curtain. 'It hardly matters.'

She wondered if any of Trunks's shoes would fit him, as she brushed her teeth, but then realised that she could do one better than that, assuming she could find them. As he got out of the shower she kept her eyes averted, but still glimpsed in the mirror his muscled back as he towelled himself dry, and felt a great stab of jealousy towards the woman that got to keep him.

Forget about that Bulma! she told herself. You've got bigger things to fret about today!

Once he was dressed she told him to follow her into the first, small lab - the one basically used as a junk room from which anything of real value had been removed. Dusty boxes and broken equipment were stacked on and under the benches. The tube that held the foul grub-like Cell was in the corner, forgotten like it had for the last three months.

'Let me just find something.'

She wandered down the bench, guided by a memory so vague it was more of a feeling. Pulling out the first couple of boxes she found a battered tool bag chock full of capsules.

'I think it's in one of these,' she said.

'What is?'

'You'll see.' She began popping them open in the floor one by one. Most of them were empty. A few contained random items – a bicycle, a pile of folded vinyl sheets, a rack of outdated computer processors. Nearly the last capsule out of the bag revealed a box containing four shiny new sets of Saiyan style armour, four pairs of never-worn white boots with gold toe caps and four pairs of white gloves.

'Huh!' said Vegeta, reaching to snag one pair of boots.

'They were my new armour prototypes for you. I never got the chance to give them to you.'

'I am familiar with your designs,' he said, pulling on the boots. He stamped them and wriggled his toes. 'They fit.'

Bulma felt a small measure of satisfaction that the time she had put in to them all those years ago hadn't been entirely in waste. She pulled the box back towards her, about to encapsulate it again, but Vegeta reached in again and selected a pair of gloves.

'I thought you didn't wear those any more?' she said. He pulled them on, carefully and deliberately, his face set in some granite expression. It made her uneasy.

'Needs must,' he said softly.

In his black jeans and black singlet, white boots and gloves and wearing an icy black expression he looked more than ever like the feral Prince of twenty years ago. A shiver ran down her spine, and then she gave a shriek as he lifted his hand and shot a small chi ball at something over her shoulder. She whirled, expecting the Kai or worse, but instead the Perspex tube that had held the Cell larvae was gushing liquid from the hole that had pierced it. The larva thrashed obscenely for a second, and then was still, steaming slightly. It was a very precise strike – nothing behind the grub was damaged.

'I don't need that thing any more,' he said. 'Best to take care of it now, before it is forgotten.'

She almost pulled away when he reached out and grabbed her shoulder roughly, but he had merely transmitted them to Korin's tower.

Korin took a step back when he saw Vegeta's face.

'We can't waste time here,' said Vegeta without any preamble. 'We don't have any communicators so we have no idea what's going on in the lab or hangar while we're gone.'

'Well smashing your communicator against the wall in temper was probably not the wisest move then.'

'You did what?' asked Bulma, but Vegeta ignored her, instead lifted his front lip in threat at Korin.

'Are you coming with us cat?'

'I said I was, didn't I?'

Peevishly Korin packed up the breakfast he'd laid out and put it in a box with some other supplies. 'Now do your transmission trick boy.'

Vegeta growled back, but laid his hands on both Korin and Bulma's shoulders.

They ate their breakfast picnic style in the hangar. Eighteen got up off the couch when they arrived and sat down by Bulma again. She still had feathers stuck to her.

'If you call me Pussy face again girl, I'll tan your hide!' Korin said to her.

'Whatever Korin.'

Korin's nose and ears were flushing red from the treatment he was getting.

'Sorry I hang out with such savages these days Korin,' said Bulma. 'I'll make it up to you someday, somehow.'

He'd brought yoghurt, fresh fruit and nut biscuits. Bulma ate as much as she could, even though it was a struggle to swallow past her nerves. Eighteen ate too. Bulma wondered why the cyborg was starting to eat more and more when she had told them she hadn't eaten for years just over a week ago. She added ask Eighteen why she's eating to the list of things to do after they got Trunks back. Also take the bomb out of Sixteen and delete his core directives was on that to do list. She never wanted him to be reduced to that raging, murderous machine again. Sixteen was standing by the time machine, and saw her looking. He smiled reassuringly.

Just behind him on the floor were the pulverised bits of communicator. So Vegeta smashed one against the wall, and what? Crushed the other one? Exactly what had happened in those few hours she had slept yesterday morning?

I do not envy you. Your hand was forced.

That's what Sixteen had said last night. She hadn't questioned it at the time because she'd been so focused on Vegeta…but what a strange thing to say. Vegeta's hand was forced…to do what? But she would ask him later, because now the hour was upon them.

Sixteen opened the hangar doors and went to fetch Bulma and Trunks's binoculars, which were in her hoverjet. She had forgotten they would need them. Oolong arrived just before they were about to embark.

Korin had thoughtfully packed some food for them to take on the time machine.

'I'll wait here until you get back' he said.

'It won't be a long wait – we'll only be gone a minute if we're successful,' she said.

'Then it will be a very long minute indeed.'

'Good luck, Bulma!' said Oolong. 'And Vegeta too, I guess.'

'You'd better make yourself scarce,' she said to Eighteen. 'I don't know what Trunks will do if he sees you when he comes back.'

Eighteen nodded. 'You'll tell him though, right? Not to kill us.'

'Yes.'

'Don't wait to long to tell him.' She looked back over her shoulder at Vegeta. 'So long, Jerk!' Despite the overt hostility, Bulma thought she caught real sadness in her words to Vegeta.

She took off out of the hangar doors. Bulma watched her go for a second, trying to get her head around the metamorphosis in the girl. It was breaking her head trying to compare her to the thing she had wished dead with all her heart for so many years. What was it about herself that seemed to attract repentant monsters?

Now that Bulma had built the lower hatch she didn't want to use it. It was cramped and claustrophobic, and all a passenger could see once they were in it was the ground beneath them and the small relay screen fed from the controls above. As Vegeta headed up the stepladder and she followed him, he sneered at her.

'Don't trust me to pilot the damn thing? I'm not sitting underneath!'

She nearly baulked at the disdain in his voice. Why hurt her like this now? It pissed her off.

'I built this machine and I'm damn well piloting it! But you don't need to sit below, there should be enough room in the cockpit for two.'

It was a tight fit jammed in next to each other side by side. Vegeta crossed his arms and radiated annoyance. Bulma looked around the hangar from this high vantage point. She was almost hyperventilating now, expecting the damn Kai to try some last minute gambit to prevent them taking off.

'Goodbye!' she yelled, flipping on the power. The dome came down, sealing them from Korin, Oolong and Sixteen's well wishes.

'Calm,' commanded Vegeta.

She gave him a withering look and powered on the hover jets and they lifted into the sky. High above Capsule Corp and the broken remains of the city she checked the time and spatial co-ordinates they had programmed last night, flipped on the cloaking device and primed the capacitators for jump. With the infinite power source it didn't take long. The hum of the fully charged capacitators make her bowels feel watery with apprehension and her hand hovered above the jump button, shaking. If this worked, the jump would take them to the universe with the next programmed vibrational beacon from Vegeta's time machine – Trunks's first jump.

'I hope we don't die,' she said.

Vegeta slapped her hand down on the button and the world outside the dome went black for a second… and then they were in a different sky, a bright blue day hanging over the bleak stone valleys and ridges of the Northern wastelands. Bulma let herself relax a little and snatched up her binoculars.

'He's to the left,' said Vegeta as she cast around. He had his eyes closed.

The smug bastard was using his chi sense. Bulma spotted the black time machine about two hundred yards away.

'In theory he got here one minute ago,' she said, and guided their machine closer to Trunks.

'Not too close,' warned Vegeta as they got within fifty yards or so. 'I've got to keep my power levels so low I'm practically asleep as it is. He's probably sweeping the area frantically so he's not caught unguarded. If you're not careful he'll sense you!' Bulma trained her binoculars on the cockpit of the other machine and her heart swelled with joy to see her son's face, bent forward over the controls and his hair falling thick in front of his eyes.

'Trunks!' she squealed, almost leaping out of the seat.

'Calm!' snapped Vegeta. 'What did I just say? Your chi just sparked like a firecracker.'

'Scuse me! No-one's ever taught me to control it.'

Trunks found what he was looking for on the time machine's dashboard – the cloaking device. He winked out of sight.

'Here we come,' said Vegeta. 'Over that ridge behind us.'

'Already?' she said. 'But we don't show up until Frieza was about to land. It's two hours early!'

She turned the machine and for a little while she could see nothing, and then two tiny figures touched down out of the sky – one in a pink shirt. Vegeta and Yamcha. Then a small high speed hover jet which she knew her younger self was piloting.

'For a reason I've never been able to fathom, in every time line except the original, Frieza's craft beats Goku to Earth by two hours.'

'How many times have you seen this?'

'A few.'

'And how do you know what happened in the original?'

'By talking to people who lived through it, like you did. It's a mark of how close to the original timeline a universe lies, if the people who live in it remember Goku and Frieza arriving at the same time or not.'

'If Frieza gets here two hours earlier, what does that mean?' she said as she watched Tien, Chao-Tsu, Gohan and Krillin touch down, tiny, tiny even through the binoculars, and then finally notice Piccolo standing on the pinnacle next to them. It gave her an awfully odd feeling to be spying on the dead like this.

'It means that Trunks is going to jump the gun…probably.'

The sky was suddenly torn above them as a disk shaped spaceship cleaved through the atmosphere. Bulma's hands hovered over the controls, ready to move them if it looked like cleaving them also, but it settled in to land below them on its many insectile legs, throwing up a huge cloud of dust. The door of the ship opened and Bulma saw soldiers pour out of it, followed by a hideous, small pale creature and a nearly as hideous pink and purple one.

'Trunks is making his move,' said Vegeta, looking in the opposite direction. He was grinning. She swivelled and saw Trunks leap from the cockpit of the now-uncloaked black time machine and hurtle towards the soldiers who were just rising into the air. She trained her binoculars on him in time to see him draw his sword and-

She started, hardly breathing at the ruthless, swift violence her son was dealing. She'd seen him train and seen him fight androids enough times, but nothing had prepared her to see her own flesh and blood chop other beings into body parts without a moment's hesitation or mercy.

She made a choking sound.

'So far, so normal,' said Vegeta in tones of satisfaction.

'Vegeta, he just…he just…!'

'What are you yammering about?'

'He just killed them…like that!'

'Well of course he did!'

She gave him a glance, and saw his utter lack of appreciation for the horror she'd just witnessed. Goku would not have done what Trunks just did – wordlessly murder a dozen men without giving them any chance to lay down arms or surrender. She didn't know why she should be surprised though that Trunks had inherited his father's killer instinct. She'd never seen it in action before, and didn't wish to again.

The figures below were talking now. Suddenly all the remaining soldiers leapt at Trunks. He dismembered them as swiftly as he had the others. Bulma felt a sweat of fear and nausea break out on her forehead.

'I guess now we find out if the plan went wrong here then,' she said weakly, as Trunks faced Frieza and his father. Vegeta picked up the other binoculars now, smiling.

'I never get sick of this part.'

Frieza fired a bolt of energy at Trunks, which the kid deflected, scattering it far and wide in every direction. One beam narrowly missed them.

'Are we actually safe up here?'

'If it gets hairy I'll throw up a chi shield,' said Vegeta.

Trunks then powered up to Super Saiyan, theatrically. She had the feeling he was showing off to Frieza, perhaps taunting him. God, her child was more like his father than she'd ever known! Frieza blasted Trunks again, more powerfully.

'He's fine!' barked Vegeta when she jumped. 'It's just as it always is. Freiza will not win this fight.'

When the dust cleared and Frieza and his father had retreated to the roof of their craft, Trunks stood there still, not a mark on him. She saw a globe of destructive chi expand from Frieza's fingertip, and even from here sense the burning, hateful energy of it, like hellfire in a bubble. When it was the size of a large house he launched it at Trunks and buried him yards deep into the ground.

Bulma screamed but Vegeta chuckled. The ball of energy halted its path and moved back up towards the sky. Trunks threw it off and disappeared, reappearing on a spire of rock close by. Whatever he said to Frieza next had the monster launching himself in attack at the boy. Her heart leapt into her throat. He'd just sliced Frieza in half. To make sure the job was done he then flashed his sword through the body again and again until Frieza was in bite sized pieces, then fried the pieces to cinders with a blast of hot chi.

'Urgh, he made him really, really dead.'

'I believe it was you who taught the boy not to make the same mistake as Kakarott did.'

'What makes you say that?'

'He told me once.'

Next they watched him confront and destroy Frieza's father, and finally join the others where they had gathered to watch the end of the fight. Even without the binoculars she could make out her own boofy headful of blue curls. That had been a high maintenance hair do. She'd never make that mistake again.

They all rose into the air, tracking towards the site that Goku would land, and Bulma stalked them from above in the cloaked time machine.

'I don't suppose you gave Trunks a capsule full of chilled beer and sodas before he left did you?' asked Vegeta.

'No.'

When they reached the site she watched them through the binoculars again. They were close enough to make out their faces now, and her heart ached to join them.

'Time to jump ahead,' said Vegeta. 'This part is boring.'

They jumped ahead nearly two hours and were just in time to see Goku's capsule crash into the dirt. Everyone rushed to greet him, and they floated disconnected overhead. Bulma didn't want Vegeta to see her cry again, so she held all the longing for her old friends inside. Trunks drew Goku away and then they had some sort of Super Saiyan stand off. Vegeta seemed unconcerned, and when she thought about it she was not surprised that Trunks would like to see Goku's powers in action. She and Gohan had sold him pretty hard on the wonder of the man.

Then they talked. At one point Goku seemed to be laughing.

'He just told Kakarott who his father is,' said Vegeta, without humour. 'I've no idea why the fool finds the idea so amusing.'

Then the second moment she'd been waiting for occurred – Trunks handed over the vial of antidote.

'Right, I think we're done here,' she said, bringing up the next jump. The same universe, but the next day was what was programmed. They would alter the course of this universe's history before Trunks jumped back in it and made another branch. Vegeta continued watching out the window and when she looked out she saw Goku suddenly fall over and roll on the ground in front of Trunks, as if in pain. Vegeta snorted.

'What?' She snatched up the binoculars again and saw that it was not pain but open-mouthed, incredulous laughter that had Goku on the ground.

'That's the part where Trunks tells Kakarott who his mother is,' said Vegeta. 'Apparently the thought of us as lovers is too much to believe.'

Bulma huffed.

They continued watching until finally Trunks took off into the sky. They tracked him back to his own machine, but instead of jumping immediately he flew the machine back to where the others were still standing talking. Goku demonstrated his instant transmission and there was further discussion. When the group took off in different directions Bulma's hand hovered over the jump button again. Surely he would jump now?

But instead Trunks flew the machine away, keeping high.

'What on Earth is he doing?' said Vegeta.

'He doesn't usually do this?'

'No! Stay on him.'

They followed him for a long time while Bulma projected their flight path on the navigation system.

'He's heading to Paozu Mountain,' she said.

'What for?'

Bulma thought back. What had they agreed he would do? She'd been so relying on Vegeta's account of what happening this day in his timeline that she had forgotten that things might be different.

'I told him he should train with the Z fighters to get stronger and fight the androids. He must be going to train with Goku.'

Vegeta glowered out at the black time machine up ahead.

'Who knows how much this could change things?'

Author's Note: Please review! I write from compulsion but reviews take me to a higher level of obsession with writing. Don't be shy - feed the author!