Chapter 37. Headache
Akane was now so big that the pain in her lower back was constant and due to the frivolous charging her whelp was seemingly trying to perfect within her womb, she had been bound to bed most of the time. Today the little tyrant kept calm however so Akane immediately seized the chance to get up. After a long shower, a monstrous lunch and a struggle to dress herself – with her stomach in the way pulling on her boots had turned into a gruelling task for which she ended up lying sideways on the bed to get it done – she left the bed chamber for the first time in over a week.
In the smaller front room of her chambers she found Kaito hanging back cross legged on one of the black armchairs listlessly fingering a small energy ball. The guard duty he was currently fulfilling was something Vegeta insisted on whenever he went off to do anything he could come up with to get as far away from Akane as possible. Akane snickered. At times she had the feeling that this gravidation was harder on the Prince than it was on herself. After a quick inquiry she learned that the Namekian's training chamber was the place where her mate had fled to this time. She couldn't really blame him for going into hiding, lately she found herself impossible to live with too.
Akane suggested to play a game of Two Kings and Kaito, obviously bored out of his mind from sitting in the front room all morning, was glad for the distraction. It seemed her gravidation was starting to take its toll on everybody, but she comforted herself and Kaito with the knowledge that it would all be over soon enough.
"Oh I don't mind sitting here for hours on end pondering how best to pass time." Kaito remarked dryly. "No, I shouldn't be sarcastic. Of course I would rather sit here listening to you snore than go down to the armoury for a shag with that cute Ensign."
Akane laughed hitting him over the head playfully. "Arse. Set up the damn board already."
Kaito did, handing her the red cone-shaped pieces and keeping the black reel-shaped ones for himself. The objective of Two Kings was to move all your pieces, five in total, onto a rectangular board consisting of thirty squares and then cross the board from one end in an S shaped path to the other. The game required strategy and little was left to chance.
"No use for your Aphrodesic Skim now, have you?" Kaito teased wiping two of her pieces from the board while she had just spent fifteen minutes getting them on.
"Don't tempt me. I might decide to use it after all." Akane snarled testily.
It dawned on her again why she hated playing Two Kings: she never won. As Kaito's remark suggested she wasn't as much a tactician on the board as she was on the battlefield. He on the other hand would have been an invincible opponent if the battle strategy he used for Two Kings had worked in the field.
"Once my kitten is born, we will have a real fight." Akane couldn't stop herself from muttering crossly because besides absolutely sucking at Two Kings, she was also a very sore looser. "And I am never playing this game again."
Kaito ignored her with an infuriating little grin in the corner of his mouth for she made the same complaints every time they played Two Kings and he only found it funny.
Akane was not amused in the slightest and her bad mood got even worse when she remembered Vegeta having that same little grin whenever she lost to him. Now that was something she really couldn't accept. Losing to Kaito was inevitable, he was the best Two Kings player she knew, but losing to Vegeta who hadn't played the game for decades… That was just plain insulting. The last time she lost to him she got so infuriated that she threw the board with all the pieces in his face and all Vegeta had done in return was laugh so hard that he ended up on the floor.
When Kaito had defeated her at Two Kings Akane, livid, released him from his duties for the rest of the day promising that she would beat him bloody first thing after giving birth to her whelp. In search of something to occupy her, she sat down at the small desk in the corner of the room and started rummaging through the drawers until she came upon a bunch of request letters from the Marauder's inhabitants directed to the Squadron Ardians. Either Kaito or Turles had been busy handling these while on guard duty and they had forgotten all about them when they were finally released from the deadening task of babysitting her in her sleep.
Akane flipped through the letters, slumped over the desk chin on her hand, snickering at the absurdness of some requests. There was one where a Wing Leader suggested to have the mess hall cook skewered and handed out to the men as treat for preparing Bubble and Squeak three times a week. Another one was an inspired solicitation on solving a personal dispute by simply shoving the other party through the ship's waste chute to let him rot somewhere in deep space. Akane wondered whether the one who filed that particular request had recently become mated like her. She considered shoving Vegeta down the waste chute herself quite a few times since they bonded.
She put the letter aside, her attention drawn by the inertness of her movements. A glance on the clock told her that she hadn't been up for two hours and yet she already felt like going back to bed. Physically at least, her mind was screaming for ways to break free from the cage her body had become to her. She hadn't been able to train for weeks and as she examined her upper arm she visualised her muscles disintegrating right before her eyes. Horror struck she flexed her bicep and touched the muscle. It felt hard enough but she could have sworn her arm used to be bigger. She checked her legs now, the parts of them she could see behind her big stomach anyway, and those too looked just that bit thinner. Well, there was nothing to do about that now… Not with the stomach… Besides, she was way too tired for training.
Suppressing a yawn she took another letter from the stack and ignored how heavy her limbs felt. She was determined not to let herself be overpowered by this hormonally induced sleepiness. She might not be able to train at the moment, she could at least manage to keep herself awake for a whole day. Vegeta would be back soon – she wasn't supposed to be left alone and doubtlessly Kaito had reported to the Prince immediately after being released for the rest of the day – and she sure didn't want her mate to find her sleeping yet again.
The little life that had been dormant for the past hours awoke within her, stirring as if knowing her defences were down and while Akane did her best to brave the punches her whelp started throwing at her insides, she couldn't stop the sense of panic that welled up in her. The whelp's power built in time with her growing fear and no matter how she tried to hold it off, her visual field soon narrowed, her thoughts becoming incoherent and her mouth going dry. It wasn't the pain itself that made her panic, though that too was becoming harder to endure, it was that which followed after the pain.
Several times before, the charging had grown so violent and the pain it caused her so overwhelming that she passed out. Her body had simply shut down to cope and though it seemed this was becoming a regular occurrence, she couldn't get used to it. Every time it happened she caught herself doubting whether she was going to wake up again. It wasn't the first that visions of her unborn kitten blasting her way out of her unconscious body forced themselves on her and she hated it. She hated being afraid of her own daughter and she hated the lack of control she had over this fear.
She should be getting back to bed where she could pass out safely, but the pain made her unable to even see clearly. The room was tilting about her, everything she tried to focus her eyes on a sickening blur. Hoping it would calm the kitten Akane's hands moved to soothingly stroke the stretched surface of her big stomach, her petting becoming more forceful as the trashing inside continued uninterrupted. A scraping sound filled her ears and it took her a while to discover that this was her own croaky voice, pleading under her breath, repeating the same words like a mantra.
"Stop kitten... stop… please just stop…"
As if to mock her the abuse worsened until the excruciating pain left Akane begging for the frightening darkness she had been fighting up until now. She didn't care whether she lived or died, all she wanted was for the pain to end. As the darkness finally came and began to envelope her, she embraced it and fell into blissful oblivion.
.
.
Akane found herself looking up at the bottom of the desk not knowing how she managed to get down there. The enormous lump throbbing on her forehead suggested it had involved an encounter with the desktop. To her relief the pain she left the waking world with was gone. All that remained was a dull ache down her abdomen. Her kitten was suspiciously quiet and she imagined the little monster lying in wait for the right time to strike again.
She snarled viciously at the annoying tugging on her body, wishing to remain exactly the way she was on the cold tiled floor even if her position was rather unnatural with her arm twisted in an impossible angle beneath her back. Vegeta was gathering her up rather clumsily in his haste.
"Leave me." Akane snarled, expecting the kitten to ambush her soon as she got up from the floor.
Vegeta obliged and tried to bend over her by cramming himself under the desk with her. When this didn't work he growled in frustration and blasted the whole thing out of his way so he could get to her.
"Hi." She croaked foolishly as he came into view above her, the alarm clear on his handsome face. "Have I been out long?"
"Couldn't have been longer than ten minutes." Vegeta carefully examined the lump on her head with his fingertips. "I came here right after Kaito told me you released him." He gave her a sharp glance. "Why would you do that?"
"He beat me at two kings." Akane muttered surly.
"Really Akane?" Vegeta looked at her both irritated and incredulous and he gave the ceiling a glance as if asking what he had done to deserve this. "Are you injured?"
Akane touched the lump on her head. "Not really, no."
Vegeta jerked her hand away from the lump harried. "Apart from that!"
Akane was still a bit shaken from what happened but there were no physical injuries except for the egg that had sprouted from her forehead. She did notice that her arm had gone numb from being trapped between the floor and her back and she shifted to retrieve it, her fingers tingling as blood was able to flow through them again. "I'm okay."
Vegeta took the hand she held up still looking exasperated and he pulled her to her feet as she finally allowed him to help her off the floor. He secured her when she tottered against him all the while giving her an angry lecture about how she was supposed to stay in bed like the medic told her and how she was being stupid and reckless.
All Akane replied to this was a distasteful "Ugh." which was muffled against his chest as she giddily tried to balance her boots on the smooth tiles of the floor. Having managed this she pushed away from him and staggered through the room to the nearest of the two armchairs.
"You should go back to bed."
Akane, in the middle of a confident attempt to sit down, made an awkward tumble sideways into the chair and hoisted herself into a seated position to throw him a challenging glare that dared him to laugh at her gracelessness.
He didn't, though the twitch in the corner of his mouth suggested that it caused him difficulty not to. "You're being an idiot."
"I've seen that bed enough." Akane snapped with a dismissive flick of her hand. "I was hoping you would take me out for a stroll today."
"It doesn't look like you're up for that." Vegeta rebounded still sounding rather irritable.
Akane lurched to sit on the edge of the chair, for a second unable to focus on his scowling face. "For all I care you carry me on your bleeding back. I'm sick of being cooped up in this place."
His remark escaped her because another dizzy spell made her sink back into the chair with closed eyes. When she opened them again Vegeta was pulling her upright ready to take her back to bed.
"Don't you dare." She hissed up at him.
He snarled at her seeming ready to bite off her head, but fussed over the cushion in her back instead.
"Will you stop that!" She hollered and when he didn't she seized one end of the cushion as well.
"Just sit back!" He hollered tugging the cushion out of her grip.
She grabbed hold of it again yelling; "I don't want to sit!"
"You are in no condition to be up right now!"
Both unwilling to let go of the cushion this resulted in a rather childish grapple marked by much grumbling and muttered curses. The cushion was ripped to shreds before long and a cloud of tiny feathers fluttered through the room. They grabbed each other's hands for a lack of something else to fight over until it dawned on them what they were doing and when their eyes met they held still, for a moment locked in a staring-match instead while the little feathers floated in between them.
"Well, at least you're back to full strength." Vegeta said winded from their struggle, probably deducing this from the fact that she'd managed to make him break a sweat. He spat out the feather that had found its way into his mouth.
Akane sneezed a couple of times from the tickling feathers on her face. Then she smacked Vegeta in the cheek doing her best to hide her amused grin. He looked at her as if stating that this was uncalled for and she explained: "Why should I be the only one with a headache?"
"Has it occurred to you that I might already have one?" Vegeta grouched.
Akane wasn't fooled by his gruff disposition because his dark eyes glinted, one of them narrowing briefly, almost unnoticeably, as in the tiniest wink.
"Still can't get yourself to hate me?" She guessed, moving to kiss the cheek she had just slapped.
He gave a defeated sigh, sending some of the feathers covering them airborne again. "No, but I'm getting there."
Akane snickered. "If we get through this without killing each other, I am treating us with drinks."
Vegeta busied himself with retrieving feathers from both their hair, the amused glint still in his eyes. "I don't drink."
"Trust me. You will before this is over." She assured him, assisting in removing the feathers from his black hair. "Can we go on that stroll now, please?"
After they had made themselves presentable again, her Prince obliged and helped her out of the chair, leading her out onto the hallway at a slow pace.
It was a pleasant stroll. Akane was so happy to be out of their chambers that she didn't even mind needing to hold onto Vegeta's arm for support as they slandered down the various long corridors of the Marauder. They talked in calm, subdued voices, liberated not to be quarrelling or discussing Akane's troublesome gravidation for once. Instead they talked about Vegetasei, the beauty of the Capital and its Palace and about things they would do once they were back like visit Akane's homeland Bethar. Akane wondered whether their wishes would bring back her brother who had become the Lord after her father's passing and Vegeta thought this possible if Biran had been alive at the time of Vegetasei's destruction. They didn't address the doubts they had about the wishes actually working since they had been over that enough and they were reluctant to let their high spirits be dampened by any negativity.
They came upon the ship's observation deck and halted to watch the stars fly by through the broad windows covering the walls of the large spherical room, silenced by the boundless panorama of space. Vegeta pressed the slightest kiss to her scarred temple and at last the peace was disrupted when horrible fat tears started splattering down her face.
"It's the hormones." She hiccoughed and then she wailed miserably: "I'm sorry!"
He cradled her even if she made weepy objections to this and when she yielded and buried her face in his shirt, instantly soaking the fabric with tears, she could hear him announce quite hopelessly into her hair: "I think I'm about ready for that drink now."