.
Just a Ride
Poisoned Heart
Inside the room he would usually share with Vegeta, Goku is a mess of sprawled limbs and gentle snores. His day had been mercifully brutal, and after a warm bath he quickly found himself succumbing to the comfort of a deep, dreamless sleep.
On this destroyer's planet, billions of light years away, he finds himself pretending.
He pretends many things: that he is only pushing his body to overcome his limits; that he doesn't know how good it feels to have Bulma and Vegeta's daughter with her legs spread wide open beneath him; and because thinking of him only makes him think of her, he especially pretends that it does not feel peculiar to be training here alone, without his favorite short-tempered companion's constant barrage of insults.
So he focuses only on his desire to become stronger, on the sharp pain the angel inflicts upon him when his guard is lowered, and the wonderful ache of his muscles at the end of each day. Even though he does not purposely seek them out, there in the back of his mind he can sense everyone he has ever cared for, and as the days pass and he becomes more and more consumed in his training, he is relived to find their continuous presence is no longer oppressive.
He had managed to immerse himself into his training so completely, that even though in order to do so he is careful to avoid certain shades of blue- he rarely thinks of her. He does his best to think only of the excitement of one day testing his new strength on a fierce new adversary, or of how he still has so much left to learn until he has mastered the use of divine ki.
He gets so good at pretending, the days he goes without thinking of her begin to outnumber the days he has, and eventually not even the moon's soft glow is capable of pulling thoughts of her from the deepest parts of his subconscious.
Sometimes he even foolishly allows himself to believe that it never even happened at all.
But on this night, within the combined energies of his loved ones back on Earth, he instinctively senses something that makes him wake up gasping.
He feels her.
A creation of his darkest desires made carnate, her energy laps at his senses, every bit as lovely and demanding as he remembers. It makes his blood run hot, and he finds himself longing to once again feel his princess' ki intimately coiled around his.
He suffocates beneath a barrage of memories; the glow of the moonlight against her milk white skin, her hair a pool of cerulean splayed out against the soft grass, the whisper of her mother reflected in the blue of her eyes- and in those moments when his darkness took control, he remembers the decadent scent of her arousal and fear intermingled.
From his open window the vibrant nebulous sky bathes him in the glow of its scattered moons, and with each ragged breath he feels himself unravel. He finds himself fighting the urge to go to her. Even though she is so far away, that small flutter of ki teases his awareness until he feels as though he is dying.
It ignites a painful ache in his chest, and an arousal so intense he finds himself stumbling out of bed and falling to his knees.
He's never wanted anyone like this.
Breathing raggedly and hunched over with his palms flat on the stone ground beneath him, his self restraint shatters. He cannot stop himself from reaching for the hard flesh pulsating between his legs. Hastily, he pulls down his cotton boxers, taking himself in hand, and with a terrible cry of relief, he falls forward with one arm propped against the stone floor and the other working furiously below him. Between the images in his fevered mind and the way her energy calls out to him, it only takes him a few strokes to unravel.
His ragged breathing echoes loudly within his chambers.
Even after his release, he still yearns for her. He feels like a young boy all over again- confused and scared of all the violent and chaotic urges in his head.
He can't seem to catch his breath. Her energy is too loud.
There are a thousand suns burning beneath his skin, and kneeling there on the stone floor he lets out a wretched sob from the agony of it. In his mind he desperately reaches for anything to ground him. He seeks the comfort of his wife's gentle energy, those of his son's, familiar and good; he seeks out the energy unique to each one of his amazing friends, and he focuses on them all at once, but it is not enough to pull him away from the madness in his head. He's gnashing his teeth and his ki flares dangerously, rattling the heavy furniture around him, and when he cannot stand this thing he does not understand, he slams his forehead against the floor, crumbling the stone below with the force of impact.
Pain.
Even though it is mild, he welcomes it. He wants more. Anything to stop this wild and consuming need from tearing him apart.
Unsated, the lust inside of him shifts into something welcome and familiar.
The temptation to wake the destroyer with a punch to his feline face is so strong he finds himself grinding his teeth and growling like a feral animal, but as much as he wants the god to unleash his devastating energy upon him, he knows it would be unwise to invoke Beerus' wrath. With his forehead pressed against the ruined stone, he searches the universe for a suitable distraction.
Someone capable of placating the destructive ire within him.
With his blood boiling, he jumps to his feet and grabs only his orange weighted pants from the bedside table before appearing on the other side of the universe.
When Goku appears barefoot before his favorite frost demon, he is still tying the belt around his waist.
"Goku?" The acrosian startles, his oily voice is raised in alarm as the soldiers flanked at his side quickly assume a defensive stance. He rises calmly from the levitating chair on which he was seated and watches the saiyan before him in apprehension.
All around him there is chaos and destruction. There are pillars of smoke scattered throughout the horizon, presumably from the cities the Frieza Force laid to waste, and all around him he feels the energy of this planet's strongest inhabitants being snuffed out one by one.
Frieza lands on the ground a few steps ahead of his men, and this time when he speaks it is with his usual saccharine tenor. "Why Goku, it's been so long. I must say, I am quite surprised to see you here." Behind him, his tail sways idly as his soldiers begin to power up beside him. He observes the saiyan with a calculated coldness. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"
Without warning, the air around them lights up in a burst of oppressive energy, simultaneously shattering the scouters worn by Frieza's men, and when Goku smiles, it is with such malice the frost demon is barely able to stop himself from taking a step back in an unconscious effort to escape. The saiyan before him looks wild. Not even when they fought on Namek, with the world falling apart around them, had Goku ever looked this out of control.
The world around him is burning, lost in a chaos that mirrors his own internal strife. Goku takes in the panic and fear of this planet's inhabitants, and with a surge of divine ki, his aura flares red.
It would appear as though he arrived just in time to save the day.
It's been years since Trunks has sensed Bulla's familiar energy, and as he sets off in the direction of West City, he finds it peculiar to notice that it feels different than he remembers.
He doesn't think about it too long, because there is a sudden sharp surge of two very powerful energies in the direction he is headed. It would seem as though Goten had already already arrived at Capsule Corporation, and rather than desperately pursue Bulla's now visible energy, had chosen to wait for her under a gravity level of two hundred with an equally impatient Vegeta.
Sometimes he forgets that even the fastest C.C. aircraft is incapable of reaching the kind of speeds he is capable of. It's going to take Bulla hours to get home. After having endured many long days in the company of his remorseful best friend, the prospect of spending the time it would take his sister to arrive home in the company one of his favorite ex-secretaries seems much more enjoyable than spending it confined in the gravity room with two irritated saiyans.
By the time his sister arrives home it is already late into the evening.
When he senses her ki enter the city limits, he slides into his trousers, plants a quick kiss on the pretty redhead stretched on the bed beside him, and grabs the last slice of pizza before jumping out her bedroom window. Once at Capsule Corporation, he touches down on the balcony above the family living quarters, and using his ki sense, searches for the gentle, loving females of his life. Both Bulla and his mother are in the dining area, and when he hears the shattering of glass he suspects that in their clumsiness, one of them has dropped a dish. While he had expected to find the lights to the G.R. still on, he is caught off guard by the lingering scent of cigarette smoke in the night air.
He had been so focused on the energy below, he failed to notice the small one in front of him.
"What are you doing here?"
The blonde girl standing at the edge of the balcony jumps and clutches at her rapidly beating heart. When she sees that it is him, her expression sharpens, and she angrily throws a lit cigarette in his direction, sending a small shower of sparks into the wind. "What does it look like I'm doing? Kami, did you need to scare me like that?"
"I didn't know you smoked. It's an unattractive habit," he said as he walked over to the large, round patio table. He took a seat on the sturdy concrete table and proffered his hand, open palm upwards, towards the seething blonde. "Let me have one, will you?"
With a scoff, she pulls out a box from her bra and tosses it at his head. He easily catches it and brings one of the appallingly feminine, long, cigarettes to his mouth, lighting it with a tiny spark of ki. "So, for the past few weeks, was there any particular reason you kept blowing off my calls?"
"Maybe because my best friend asked me to." Marron steps up to the table, pulls up a patio chair all the while giving him a placating smile, as though she were immune to the awful grating noise of metal upon concrete. She takes a cigarette from the box, and when she leans forward with it perched between her lips, there is something cold and calculating in her gaze that him makes him wonder if perhaps she is a little like him; if perhaps she had also inherited just a little of her parent's malice. "Aren't you going to light me up?"
Trunks stretches his arm towards her, touching the end of her cigarette with the tip of his finger and asks, "So, tell me Marron, is there any reason in particular my sister decided running off with you was a good idea? Did you two not get enough private time together all those years you spent alone in medical school? Did she suddenly forget she had a family she hasn't visited in years, or a boyfriend that was practically losing his mind without her?"
Marron falls back into her seat and when she tilts her head back she releases a plume of smoke up into the night air. For a moment, Trunks is glad he sated his lust before coming home. He had forgotten how gorgeous Krillin's daughter was. Marron was the opposite of his sister. Where Bulla is all obscene curves, Marron is a lithe, elegant beauty, and he is left wondering why he's never bothered taking her to bed before. The need for a petty sort of revenge to get back at Bulla for ruining his best friend only serves to make the idea even more appealing. He doesn't dwell on those devious thoughts for long, because when she opens her mouth, she is kind enough to remind him of all the things he's doing his best to avoid thinking of.
"I know Bulla and you have had your differences, but right now she is going to need her families support more than ever, and that most definitely includes you. She is going to need all of your love and none of your judgment, understand?" Though her tone is stern, there is a pleading look in Marron's eyes that revs up his anxieties, thrusting him into that place where he sees his sister shaking on the bathroom floor, bruised and reeking of sex. In his head he hears the worry in Goten's voice as he asks about Bulla for the millionth time and apologizes for something he is too ashamed to admit.
"What's going on with Bulla?" Trunks asks, remembering sensing the trace of something ugly when he argued with her on Kame Island. "Is it something really bad?"
Marron brings the dainty cigarette up to her mouth and takes a long drag as she considers his words. With her eyebrows furrowed in thought, she turns to the G.R. He hears the hum of the machine powering down, and senses the nearing energy of his best friend and father no longer in their powered up states.
"You have to promise that no matter what happens, you're going to love your sister," she says, turning to look at him with those piercing, blue eyes. "And that you won't be too hard on Goten. Bulla wouldn't want that. She cares for him in her own special way."
"Of course, I'm always going to love my sister," Trunks says with a dry little laugh, before his voice takes on a menacing edge. "But what the fuck does Goten have to do with anything?"
Marron opens her mouth to reply, but whatever she started to say is drowned out by a loud explosion beneath them.
It was a long drive back, and after an hour spent in the shower, beneath the warm spray of water and in the company of her worried thoughts, she decided it was time to face her family.
With an air of feigned confidence and nonchalance, she makes her way downstairs.
For a moment Bulla stands at the entryway to dining room, watching as her mother hums to herself while she places a set of chopsticks at each seat and a few bottles of sake at the center of the table. There is an assortment of sushi platters lined up along the dining room table. She grimaces through the nausea that the strong smell of fish brings, and waits until her mother places the last little sake cup on the table
"Hey, mom, I'm home," Bulla says as she walks up behind her mother.
"Shit!" Bulma gasps, flailing her arms and sending the small cup crashing onto the floor. In the background she hears the whirr of a cleaning bot called to life by the sound of shattering glass.
Bulla hastily apologizes, but is silenced when her mother pulls her into her arms. In the hours it took to get from Kame Island to West City, in her head, Bulla had replayed each of her worries a million times. She hadn't known what to expect when she got home. A lot has happened within the past few weeks, and deep down she knows that she is a different person than she was the last time she stood within these walls. With all that she has learned, she feared coming home to discover that her family had become strangers. That when she would see her father and look into his eyes, they would be absent of that comforting warmth she grew up knowing; that she would see the eyes of a monster. She thinks that it had simply been a stroke of luck that Trunks had not discovered her secret hours ago on the beach, but she has a strong feeling that when she faces her father, she will not be as fortunate.
Even if it is only for a moment, in the safety of her mother's arms she allows herself to believe that if any goodness at all comes from this, then everything that she is doing will have been worth it.
She even dares to dream that one day everything will be okay.
Bulma pulls away, holding her daughter out at arm's length, and when she looks her over, Bulla wonders if the sudden strain in her mother's smile is because she feels it-that little innocuous flutter of life sitting between them. She wonders if her mother would scream or be shocked into silence when she finds out she is going to be a grandma; then she morbidly ponders her mother's reaction to discovering the baby belonged to the little monkey boy she had run over with her car a lifetime ago.
"Oh, my! Sweetheart, it looks like you may have gone a little overboard with whatever crash diet you were on," Bulma says with a forced chuckle.
"It's just stress, but I'm feeling better now." Bulla tries to placate the lingering suspicion in her mother's eyes with something she hopes is more smile than grimace.
"You know you can tell me anything, right?" Bulma asks, clasping her warm hands against her daughter's cheeks. They both stand at the same height, and when Bulma begins to look over her face with those intelligent eyes, Bulla fights the urge to squirm.
The half hearted response forming on her lips is interrupted by the sound of a door sliding open behind her.
This is it.
She takes a steadying breath, and when her mother steps away she turns to see Goten walking towards her.
After weeks of blaming himself for her disappearance, Goten is finally standing in front of her.
There are bruises on his face and a smudge of blood at the corner of his mouth, and even though there are traces of uncertainty within his eyes, when he smiles down at her it is heartbreakingly beautiful. It's a morbid thought, but she hopes her child grows up to have that same smile- it's father's smile. She is not certain if it is the adoration in his eyes, or the overpowering smell of food and sweat making her stomach churn. He reaches down for her with his burly arms and when she automatically tenses in anticipation of being mashed against his sweaty chest, she notices movement in her peripheral.
In the second she looks up into her father's eyes, she knows that her luck has run out.
She can tell that something already has him severely agitated, but when his attention shifts to Goten, she is filled with a terrible fear. His expression turns into an animalistic rage so palpable it makes the breath hitch in her throat, and she finds herself desperately reaching for Goten.
She doesn't even see it happen.
At the same time her arms close in on the nothingness in front of her, a powerful gust of air nearly knocks her off her feet and the ground quakes from the force of a loud explosion.
The world around her blurs.
It is as though she is looking through a fishbowl, and there is a terrible ringing in her ears. Not only is Goten gone, but so is the wall that was behind him. Across the room, the table lies on its side, and there is a mess of sushi and broken glass strewn across the floor. Through the haze of debris, she notices a golden light floating above the rubble. The air is thick with smoke, but she can still make out a small shadow slightly moving within the chunks of broken concrete. All it takes is a gentle gust of wind to lift the smoke, revealing that the odd shadow peeking through the debris is Goten's boot - it is bent unnaturally with blood seeping through the fabric, and the source of the light hovering above him is her father in his super saiyan form.
A surge of fear prompts her to push her body towards the rubble. As she stumbles in their direction, over broken glass and clumps of sushi, the world folds in on itself, and when it comes back together with a pop, it rights itself regaining its original clarity.
Her first conscious thought is that she needs to help Goten. She is frightened for him. She has never seen her father look so angry.
There is spittle flying from his mouth as he screams at the crumpled body beneath him. "You pathetic, third class swi-" His voice fades in and out over the blood rushing in her ears, and his rage heats the air around her until it is stifling. "Philandering piece of-" As she leans against the broken wall, the sheetrock crumbles beneath her palms. "Impregnate my daughter-" The loose dirt stings her lungs, and when she looks down at the body lying among the rubble, the breath she has been holding leaves her in a scream.
Vegeta goes quiet and even beneath the weight of his stare, she cannot tear her eyes away from the broken body in front of her.
She never meant for this to happen.
"Goten!" she wails, slipping on loose dirt as she scrambles into the small crater he is lying in. There is so much blood. A piece of rebar is protruding through his abdomen, and both his legs are grotesquely fractured. There is another burst of light, and in the background she hears her brother and father arguing and her mother calling out for someone to find a senzu bean.
She falls to her knees beside him, and when she takes his dirty hand in hers, he turns to look at her. Despite the traumatic injuries, he smiles up at her and asks, "Is it true, Bulla?"
Her words fail her.
She is too stunned by the destruction before her to formulate a response.
This is the first time she has ever seen her father inflict such a horrendous injury, and when she wonders how he could do something so evil, she finds herself horrified to realize that she is just as bad as he is.
Beneath the anger and fear, there is a mild disgust. Not at her father, but at Goten for being so weak.
The thought is pushed away when within the arid smoke and food, she notices the foul smell of perforated bowel. She is trembling terribly, and though her medical training is usually second nature, right now she does not know what to do. In an attempt to get her attention, he gently squeezes her hand.
"Is it true, Bulla?" he asks again, forming each word through a shallow, ragged breath. "Are you really going to have my baby?"
No. The word sits behind her tongue, but she nods instead.
Something wet lands on her hand. When she looks down to their entwined hands, she sees a steady patter of drops, and realizes that through the shock, she is crying.
It is so unimaginably painful to know that all of this is her fault.
She thinks of Goku somewhere out there in the universe, oblivious of this mess they have created together, and wonders why he has left her here.
Even though Goten is pale from the blood loss, there is still a brightness shining in his eyes. When he opens his mouth to speak, he is overcome by a terrible rattling cough. When it passes, his teeth are still clenched in pain, and she sees fresh blood leaking from the corners of his mouth. His fingers begin to slacken against hers and she can see the light dimming in his eyes.
Even if he were to get wished back to life, if he were to die right now, in front of her like this, she doesn't think she would ever truly recover.
"Yes, I'm going to have your baby!" she yells abruptly.
Her words have their desired effect.
He stirs beside her, squeezing her hand, and when he smiles up at her, his eyes crinkle at the corners.
Through her peripheral, she sees a golden form nearing them, further illuminating the destruction around them with each step. In the chaos of her mind she hears her brother's gruff voice, but she cannot understand what he is saying. There is a sudden clawing at her fingers, and when she looks down where her hand is entwined around Goten's, she sees a third hand, small and white. Marron is kneeling beside her, and Bulla recognizes that her blonde friend has donned her trauma queen persona.
"I'm going to need you to let his hand go now, Bulla," Marron says sternly. Her expression is tense as her finger's uselessly fumble against the blue haired girl's inhumanly strong grip. Bulla can only blink in response. When her bother begins yelling again she sees a crack in Marron's professional exterior. The blonde's brows furrow in irritation, then she raises her hand and forcefully slaps the stunned girl.
"Bulla, let go of his fucking hand!" Marron screams. "I suggest you remove it if you don't want Goten to crush it when Trunks lifts him off the rebar."
This time Bulla listens. The sharp, sudden pain on her cheek is enough to snap her out of her trance.
As soon as she pulls her hand away, Trunks crouches beside his injured friend and grips the metal bar, easily snapping it above where it protrudes from his abdomen. Her brother softly apologizes to Goten before carefully lifting him. A pained howl escapes him, but his pride makes him swallow it. When he is placed on the ground, blood begins to gush out of his abdominal wound.
Trunks shoves a senzu bean into his friend's mouth, and when he speaks it there is a slight unsteadiness in his tone."Hurry up and eat this. You can't die yet- I'm the one that's going to kill you."
When she hears her mother's loud voice, she looks up and to see her yelling at Vegeta.
"What were you thinking?" Bulma's hands are clenched at her sides and her face is red with fury as she screams at the stoic man hovering above them. The aura around him crackles in rage, but his face is void of any expression as he regards the scene below him. Even though her mother is calling out to him, her father's gaze remains fixed on her.
Bulla cannot bear the intensity of his stare- not when he's transformed and the green of his eyes looks so undeniably inhuman and violent. It makes her think of all the terrible things King Kai told her, and for a moment she questions why she is doing this. She looks at the people in front of her: Marron and her mother watching in awe as Goten's stomach wound closes, and her brother who is now standing beside his friend, observing them with an expression that matches their father's. Days ago she had already accepted that when it came to having this child, she didn't have a choice. Bulla understood her father's barbaric past had nothing to do with any of this; the pardoning of his soul was simply being offered in consolation, but in this moment all her self loathing shifts, and she finds herself blaming her father for everything.
"Why did you do this? Why? Why?" She cries out. In the back of her mind she hears her own voice answer.
Because there is something wrong with you.
You are selfish.
You have no self control- you hurt everyone.
A sharp pain in her abdomen makes her curl in on herself, but it does not lessen the turmoil writhing hotly inside her. Without lifting her head she screams, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
Her father's chuckle makes her blood run cold. She braces her hands against the ground and looks up at him.
"You want to know why? I did not break that idiot's legs because he bred you- oh, no." he says scathingly, turning his hateful gaze towards the young man who had been bleeding out on the rubble. The wound in his abdomen is completely healed, and other than the tattered clothes and the blood caked on his skin, he is fine.
"Vegeta, look-," Goten stammers, pushing himself up.
"Quiet!" Vegeta bellows and the aura around him crackles. The way he is staring at Goten is so feral, she finds herself crawling over to him and grabbing onto his arm for support.
"Daddy, I love him!" Bulla cries out. The words are born from fear, because she does not know what else to do.
"Bulla, I'm so, sorry. You need to know that I didn't mean to-" Goten began, pulling her towards him, but Vegeta cuts him off.
"You love him? Why don't you ask your brother how this boy has dishonored you?" he asks mockingly, and when his furious gaze lands on Trunks, the young man flinches. "This boy is not worthy of your love."
Bulla looks at her brother, but he is unable to meet her eyes. He doesn't say anything, and Bulla's rage seems to deflate. After what she has done, the thought of Goten doing anything to dishonor her seems laughable.
"I don't want you to leave me, Bulla. It was all an accident, a mistake," Goten stammers worriedly. He's grabbing onto her shoulders and looking very apologetic, as though minutes ago he hadn't nearly died right in front of her.
"Whatever it is, I don't care. We'll work through it," Bulla says.
The whole situation is so preposterous, and between the fatigue and dull throb in her pelvis, she finds herself falling into Goten's arms. In the darkness her father glowed with a fierceness unlike anything she has ever seen, and even as she is pressed up against Goku's son, the sickness inside of her reminds her that no one else in the universe could ever match her saiyan. She would love to see him light up the sky for her.
Vegeta's barking voice snaps her out of her thoughts. "You do not care that the night before last, this pathetic warrior- who's offspring you now foolishly carry, brazenly stumbled into your home smelling of another female? It does not insult you to know that he reeked of her?"
"I was so drunk, Bulla! I only let her jerk me off because I thought she was you!" Goten's hasty explanation only made the older saiyan's energy snap around them in warning, and from beside her she hears Marron gasp.
"That is so much worse." Trunks raised his palm to his face and sighed. "You just got put back together- please just shut up, we don't have enough senzu beans for this shit."
The ridiculousness of the situation is too much.
If it wasn't for Goten - who much to her father's displeasure, was holding her up as he groveled into her ear, she is sure she would have sunken into the ground. She turns away from her father sparking angrily above her, to the destruction around them. There is a wall missing in the dining room because her father, upon learning she was pregnant with what everyone assumed was Goten's child, flagrantly abused his inhuman power by flinging the poor man through it in defense of her nonexistent honor. Only minutes ago, not only had Goten's legs been broken so severely she doubted even his saiyan genetics would have allowed him to heal completely, but he had narrowly lost his life.
All of this, because she had fucked Son Goku.
She laughs from the absurdity of it all, pushing herself out from Goten's arms just enough to meet his downtrodden expression. From the hurt repressed in her heart, a bubble of hysteria comes tumbling out of her lips. She's thinking of her saiyan warrior and their clandestine affair; the weight of his heated stare and the way she felt so utterly complete with the heat of his skin, and laughs because even though she has no right to, she wants him so badly.
Her need for him is burning her alive.
Goten's brows furrow in concern, but she doesn't notice or care because she is still lost in thoughts of Goku and the pieces of him that belong to her. She laughs and laughs at the insanity of it all, and when she grabs a fistful of his wild, dark hair and brings them together in a forceful kiss, she is still giggling. The blood in his mouth tastes wonderful, like copper beneath her tongue, and she finds herself forgiving him for everything he has done and everything he will do. Vegeta's ki surges dangerously above them. Not knowing what else to do, beneath everyone's stares, Goten politely returns the kiss and swallows her laughter.
Through the mess in her head, her mothers panicked voice fails to register over the lovely taste beneath her tongue. Goten gently pushes her off him, his eyes dancing over her body until they stop at the juncture between her legs.
"Bulla, you're bleeding!" he gasps. She peers down at her thighs, and sure enough there is a bright bloom of blood against the light pink fabric of her sweats.
After everything she has gone though, she can't lose the baby.
Not now.
All of this would have been for nothing.
She blinks and sees a pair of clear blue eyes peering up at her; he's all gummy smiles and he's reaching his chubby little arms out towards her.
Her hearts breaking and in her head she hears her own voice screaming.
Please don't take my baby!
"Goten, hurry up and grab her before she loses any more blood. Take her to the medical wing," Marron orders, jumping to her feet, and turning her attention to the lavender haired man in front of her. "Trunks go get another senzu bean and give it to her immediately." The blonde turns to Bulma and says, "Just in case that doesn't work I'm going to want a medical bot ready to go at the bedside."
The voices around her become distorted and through the colorful blurring of the world around her, she sees Goku kneeling right besides her.
When did he get here?
A new burst of laughter escapes her. She is so, so stupidly happy to see him.
"You're here!" Her trembling hands frame his face, and then she begins to sob. "Why did you leave me here? You promised me- you told me I was special. Was I not good enough? Let's leave here together," Bulla pleads as she begins to shift in his arms in an attempt to bring herself closer. "I'll go anywhere with you. I'll let you do whatever you want to me. Please, just take me with you." Bulla is too overwhelmed by his sudden appearance to notice his uneasy expression, and when he lifts her up, she smiles brightly up at him.
"We can go back- you said the suns were on the other side. Will you show them to me. Imagine how beautiful those fields look in the light." There is a wildness dancing in her blue eyes, the likes of which he has never seen before, and Goten finds himself unable to tear his eyes away from the macabre sight of his blood stained against her teeth and smeared over her lips.
It isn't until Marron shouts at him that he heads to the medical wing with his ki enhanced speed, leaving the blonde alone with Bulla's parents. It only takes a few seconds before he is in the medical wing, and when he tries placing her into the medical pod, she begins to thrash wildly.
"Don't you dare fucking leave me!" She claws at his arms, and screams like a wild thing.
The medical robot is beeping excitedly beside him, and within its metal arms it is holding an injection, primed and ready. The door slams open and after placing the blonde he had been carrying on the ground, Trunks walks over to the head of the bed and shoves the senzu bean into his sister's mouth. He pinches her lips shut, forcing her to chew.
After she swallows, he pulls his hand away from her mouth and she beings to scream again, begging to not be left behind. Snapping on a pair of latex gloves, Marron walks over to them and though she appears calm and collected, the saiyans can hear her heart rapidly beating while she assesses her hysterical friend. She reaches for the wires hanging by the medical pod and begins attaching them to the bleeding girl in front of her and cooly says, "Administer 5 mg diazepam IM."
"My baby- don't let them take my baby," Bulla cries out, trashing her head against the bed.
The bot seizes her arm in its pincer like grasp and chirps. "5 mg diazepam administered."
The pain of the injection doesn't even register. Neither does the sting of the IV insertion that follows. The two half saiyans are holding her down, but Bulla doesn't see either of them.
There are tears streaming down her eyes as looks up at him and pitifully sobs. "Please, don't leave me!"
"I'm not going anywhere. I promise." Goten's words are shaky, and when Trunks looks up he notices a glisten of unshed tears brimming in Goten's eyes. His friend's complexion is paler than it was minutes ago, when he had been bleeding to death.
"Do you still think about me? I think about you all the time Go-" The rest of Bulla's words are muffled when a hand suddenly clamps over her mouth.
"Fuck this shit." Marron growls, keeping her hands firmly clamped over her friend's mouth. "I want flumzeniil and oxygen ready to go on standby. We're gonna snow this bitch."
The bot keeps administering sedatives until the blue haired girl goes limp and the loud, frantic beeping of the machines steadily normalize. As Marron works with the medical bot around them, both half saiyans remain standing at the bedside, in a state of silent shock. It isn't until Marron begins pulling down his sister's blood stained sweatpants that Trunks hastily turns to face the door just in time to see his mother frantically enter the room with a train of physicians hot at her heels.
Between easily subduing the soldiers coming to the aid of their master and exchanging blows with the powerful frost demon, he finds relief.
He fights Frieza for hours.
As he exchanges blows with the acrosian, he sates the animalistic violence inside of him, and for the frost demon, it quickly becomes becomes apparent that the saiyan's intent is to maim, not kill, so he plays along, and forgoes destroying the planet in a last ditch effort to flee.
Instead of bombarding Frieza with a volley of ki, he finds himself succumbing his more savage nature.
There is something malicious in the way he teases his opponent, continuously attacking him at close range, but holding back just enough to ensure he can keep fighting. Even with all the power of his golden form, Frieza can't win. They both know this, but it does not stop Goku from drawing out the battle. There is no honor in the way he is fighting, and even though he reasons that he would deserve it for what he has done to this planet, Goku finds himself startled by how ferociously the darkness inside of him wants more than the pain he inflicting upon his opponent. It wants to see Frieza contorted on the ground, a mess of broken bones and agonizing pain.
It wants him begging for his life.
When he is fighting, there is no room in his mind for beautiful blue haired girls, or guilt, or love. There is only the thrill of the fight, and he finds himself suddenly pulled away from it when he senses a sudden drop in his youngest son's ki. The mountain behind him crumbles beneath the momentum of the monstrous kick he narrowly dodges.
As he exchanges charged blows with Frieza, he hones in on the energy signatures back on Earth. The first one he senses distracts him enough that even though he jerks back in time to avoid the full impact of the furious acrosian's tail, he is not quick enough to avoid the subsequent gash to the cheek.
He forces himself to focus on the fight, to focus on anything but her.
From his quick assessment of the energy signatures surrounding Goten, other than the saiyan's charged up in their anger, he senses no obvious threat. In the back of his mind as he parries blows with Frieza, he continues monitoring the curious happenings on Earth. A senzu bean is used. His youngest son's ki rejuvenates quickly, and a moment before he severs the link tethering his consciousness to Earth, he abruptly senses the small light of his blue haired princess begin to wane. Dread unfurls within him, and he is overcome with an irrational need to go to her, but for what reason he is unsure. He knows the people who surround her would die before ever allowing anything to happen to her.
Channeling his energy in a burst of light so blinding it obscures his golden form, Frieza takes advantage of Goku's lapse in attention by sending a barrage of ki blasts raining down upon him. Goku doesn't move quick enough. One of the blasts hits him in the stomach, sending the saiyan crashing to the ground, and the world around them shakes from the impact.
It takes less than a second for him to recover, and for Frieza to nearly escape the stratosphere. With a wicked smile he phases behind the frost demon, grabs onto his tail and sends him plummeting back down to onto the alien terrain. He feels like he is burning from the inside. He doesn't give Frieza time to recover before flying back down pull him out of the broken earth.
By the time the madness inside of him subsides enough for him to think clearly, they are both fighting mid-air, covered in blood and bruises and panting from the exertion. His training with Whis has paid off. This is the longest he's been able to maintain this form.
It has been a while since he felt Bulla's energy stabilize, but finds he can no longer control his impulse to visually confirm her wellbeing.
While still maintaining his super saiyan red form, he pulls back a safe distance from Frieza, and along with the features characteristic of his transformation, the red of his aura ebbs away until he his left in his base form.
He's at his limit anyway.
"Hey, I gotta go," Goku says, matching Frieza's look of irritation with an easy smile. "It's not nice to pick on those who are weak when you're so strong. It's just not a fair fight." With two fingers raised up to his forehead, Goku focuses on the energy signature of some Capsule Corporation employee working alone at the edge of the compound, and before giving into the call of her energy, yells out to the battered fighter hovering before him. "Try not to be too bad, okay?"
The scenery changes.
He is no longer hovering over a barren wasteland and looking upon Frieza's affronted expression. He is in an unfamiliar lab. It is dim and in front of him there is a middle aged human with one hand rapidly clacking away at a computer, the only source of light in the dark room, while simultaneously peering into a test tube filled with something fluorescent. The human is too engrossed in what he is doing to notice the saiyan behind him.
Even after her energy stabilized, his son remained at the princess's side. It makes him feel unwell to sense Goten's energy so close to her.
He knows it is risky, but he just needs to see her.
He tells himself he won't get too close.
With his ki lowered as much as possible, Goku wanders out of the lab, following the pull of her energy. With his attention focused on avoiding those around him, he walks the empty halls of Capsule Corporation, and beneath the bright fluorescent lights, trepidation unfurls within his stomach. He senses Vegeta's furious energy somewhere over the Southern Sea, and is glad he gone. His heart is drumming so loudly, he is sure if the prince were close he would have easily noticed him sneaking through the empty hallways of his home.
With each step, the scent of antiseptic gets stronger, and he soon finds himself in his least favorite part of the compound. This is the place where Bulma sends him to get patched up when Vegeta and him get a little too carried away with their training. He hates the smell here and how white everything is. Beneath the artificial light, his eyes hurt.
His steps lead him to a sleek, glass door, and from behind it he can sense her energy.
From where he is standing, all he can see is the back of Goten's head. A wild mess of black hair obstructs his view of her, and when he looks around the room at all the strange equipment and machines flashing around them, he sees something that makes it hard to breathe.
Reflected against the pitch black of the window, he sees their faces clear as day, and for a moment he does not know what he is seeing.
There is something dreamlike in the image they make.
Even with his features scrunched up in worry, his son looks so much like he did when he was young. He's all lean muscle and identical in nearly everything but the cut of his hair; and sleeping in front of him, he swears he sees the same girl he once saw cheering him on when he fought the twenty-third Tenkaichi Budokai. It's like seeing what could have been, and suddenly he does not want to be here anymore.
It feels wrong.
Wrong that a girl who is not his wife- who does not belong to him, is making him act so impulsive and perverse; that beneath the self loathing and ire of his more animalistic nature, he is jealous of his son for being able to hold her hand.
Even when she is lying there in bed, looking so frail and small, she makes everything inside of him feel too big; as though she is taking up the space inside of him where his heart should be. The universe told him she was his, so why does it feel like he is losing something that never belonged to him in the first place?
All at once he feels incredibly weary. Too weary to feel guilty, or focus on anything other than the pain in his body. He wants to go to his loving wife, kiss the top of her head and wrap his arms around her.
He wants the comfort of something familiar.
He doesn't belong here.
He wants to go home.
In the back of his mind he senses a change in the saiyan prince's energy so severe even Goten flinches in his seat. Vegeta must have sensed him, because suddenly there is a monstrous flare of his ki and it is rapidly heading this way. Goku knows Vegeta is mad at him for fighting Frieza, and that if he were to go home, the angry prince would follow. The silence in the empty hallway is broken by a faint mechanical whirr behind him. Quickly he turns, and when he sees the security camera discreetly mounted behind him with its black lens focused directly on him, a terrible dread creeps down his spine.
Goten sits up alert, and when he jerks his head to the glass door behind him all he sees is the empty hallway.
She opens her eyes to see soft sunlight pouring into a white sterile room, and in the background the low, muffled persistent wooshing noise she hears makes her bolt up in bed. A warm hand pulls her back and when she turns, she sees Goten sitting in a chair right beside her. Her head is swimming; she remembers this poor man being smashed into the dining room wall, her father's fury, and the spontaneous bleeding between her legs, but she does not remember how she got here.
"What am I doing here?" she asks, staring at the IV inserted into her forearm and then up at the fluids and medications it is connected to. A medical bot softly chirps beside her as it begins to scan her body. "How long have I been here?"
"It's been three days. Kami, I haven't been that scared since I was a kid. You were bleeding. You almost lost the baby," he says as he shifts forward in his seat to place a gentle kiss on her forehead. He looks fresh sitting there in one of his dojo's t-shirts and baggy sweats, not at all like someone who had their gut busted and legs crushed.
"How long have you been here?" The last thing she remembers after impulsively kissing Goten is the pain and shock of seeing blood at the juncture of her legs.
"Three days."
"Three days," she repeats softly.
There is a flat disc strapped to her abdomen, and as relived as she is to hear a continuous, irregular heartbeat coming from the machines around her, it breaks her heart to know while this man sat vigil at her bedside, he had been listening to what to her was the very obvious heartbeat of a fetus nearing it's second trimester. From the relived smile on the half saiyan's face, it would mercifully appear that no one had told him either.
A few minutes later an older gentleman with a kind face and wrinkled lab coat walks in. He is one of West Cities most respected obstetricians, and after gently scolding her for her lack of prenatal care and informing her that she has been medically cleared, he tells her that in three days he will be following up with her here, in her home where she will not be allowed to leave until she delivers. When he walks out of the room, her mother steps in.
Bulma smiles when she sees her daughter sitting up in bed, and then snaps at Goten for not having the sense to get his pregnant girlfriend something to eat. She can tell her mother is irritated at poor Goten for his infidelity. The young man mumbles a sheepish apology before hurrying out the door.
"I'm so glad you're okay," Bulma cries as she throws her arms around her youngest child and buries her face into Bulla's long, tangled hair. "Please don't ever scare me like that again."
"It's okay. I'm okay. There's nothing to worry about," Bulla says with a tired smile. Bulla pushes the heavy blankets off of her and swings her legs off the edge of the bed.
When her mother sits down besides her, there is a tightness in her smile. "Bulla, I almost lost my first grandchild. I could have lost you, too. You looked so unwell- skin and bones. Nothing about that was the least bit okay." Her mother's cups her cheeks in her warm hands and her smile softens. "Thank Kami for senzu beans though, am I right? But all that aside, I can't believe you've made me a grandma. Goten and you are going to have the strongest, most beautiful and intelligent little babies the universe has ever seen." Bulma rolls her eyes lets out a little disbelieving huff. "Although, I can't believe the nerve of that boy- cheating on you. What the hell was he thinking? Especially after he went through all that trouble of opening up a new dojo in Beach City, just so you wouldn't leave him once summer was over." With a wistful smile, Bulma leans forward to brush her daughter's fringe away from her eyes. "I love Goten like a son, but I've also been burned like that by men before. Even if you have his baby, you don't have to stay with him if you don't want to."
With her mother looking at her like that, the steady low whoosh in the background- that confirmation of the life growing inside of her becomes almost unbearable. She tears the velcro belt and the fetal monitor falls to the white tiled floor, and after a final burst of distorted feedback, the room goes silent.
Taking a deep breath, Bulla turns to her mother with a watery smile. "Mom, I forgive him. We're both new to relationships, and between the two of us, I'm sure there are going to quite be a few bumps down the road, but for now everything is okay. I mean it."
Bulma looks down at the plastic disc on the floor that landed beside her foot, and before her mother conceals it with a practiced smile of her own, Bulla catches the look of disbelief on her mother's face. "This secret you were keeping- it was literally eating you alive." Bulma takes her daughter's hands in her own. "I want you to know, there is nothing that you can't tell me. Nothing, you understand?"
I think about Goku all the time.
Without him, I feel like I am dying.
This baby is his.
Bulla feels the words lodged in the back of her throat, and for a delirious moment she wants to set them free. Bulla doesn't trust herself to answer, so she simply nods and calls to the med bot for a gauze.
With her brows furrowed in concentration, Bulma appears to be collecting her thoughts as she watches her daughter peel the transparent tape over her IV. "You really scared all of us- your brother, Goten, Marron, your father. Marron said it was the combination of blood loss and shock that made you act the way you did."
When Bulla furrows her brows, her mother clarifies. "You know- a little delusional."
Dread coils at the bottom of her stomach. In surprise, her eyes dart from the little plastic catheter she is holding in place with her finger, up to her mother who was now bending at the waist to pick up the little plastic transducer by her feet.
"What do you mean delusional?" Bulla asks.
"Oh, you know- you just went a little loopy. You started acting strangely- saying weird things." Marron said she had to sedate you. Other than those times he was sure universal destruction was imminent, I don't think I've ever seen your father look so worried." Her mother says this all with an air of forced nonchalance as she gives the transducer a light thwack that resonates angrily on the monitor. "You went a little crazy there, accusing Goten of leaving you." The more her mother speaks, the quicker her heart beats, and before the monitors around her can give her away, she hastily begins pulling the electrodes off her body. "Then you started talking about a place with suns, partly covered in darkness. Have you ever been somewhere like that, Bulla?"
It flashes brightly through her memory; that alien world with soft blue grass and two moons, and she forces out a laugh of disbelief. "A place with suns? Like plural? Did I also mention the lovely little duet I sang with my grandpa, King Vegeta, after I went Super Saiyan?" She doesn't think she mentioned Goku. If that were the case, she doubts she would have woken up to see Goten smiling at her bedside.
"No, I don't think you mentioned that part," Bulma sighs. Her heart beat is so loud it is pounding in her ears. They share a moment of silence between them, and then when her mother speaks, Bulla is grateful her mother does not share the saiyan's ability to easily sense psychological symptoms of distress. "You know, it's so funny- a long time ago your father and I were once on a planet that-"
Bulla fears if she is subject to any more of this, she will somehow end up giving herself away, and the mention of her father fills her with many conflicting emotions.
"Tell me, what does that have to do with anything?" Bulla asks heatedly. "Are we all just going to ignore what happened? How are you sitting here right here in front of me right now, acting like dad didn't just throw my boyfriend- who by the way, has known dad his whole life- through a goddamned wall?!" She pulls herself to her feet and the blood rushes to her head in a sickening whoosh. "I forgive Goten for what he did- I think he's trying he's best, but what daddy did was so cruel. I was so scared!"
Bulma opens her mouth then shuts it as she grapples for the right words, and somehow decides the appropriate way to respond is with nonchalance. "Goten is fine." She says with a dismissive wave of her hand. "That's what we have senzu beans for."
"He could have died," Bulla said, grabbing onto the plastic dome of the medical pod for support.
"If he had, we would've just wished him back," Bulma shrugs, and if it wasn't for the slight unease in her mother's expression, Bulla truly would have believed her mother was unaffected by what happened. Bulma stood up and walked over to her daughter, offering the crook of her arm for support. "On the bright side, you can be damned sure anytime some little hussy starts batting her eyelashes at him, Goten will remember to keep it in his pants."
Bulla gasps, but her mother doesn't give her a chance to respond.
"I'm honestly surprised that boy knocked you up. I manufactured saiyan-proof rubbers just for the boys, you know?" Bulma says as she pulls Bulla towards the doors. "But, either way this is all just so exciting. My first grand-baby- I can't believe it!"
In nothing but a thin white hospital gown, Bulla is dragged out of the medical wing by her exuberant mother. From the way her mother smiles, Bulla knows in her head, her mother is already hearing the pitter patter of little feet running through the long, empty corridors of Capsule Corporation.
Even though it is late in the afternoon, the sun burned so hot it only took a minute for the slush of Bulla's virgin pina colada to liquify. At the poolside, both Marron and herself were sprawled out on loungers drying off their wet swim suits beneath the summer sun. Marron had a text book propped against her knees and while she idly turned the pages, beneath the dark lenses of her oversized sunglasses, on a tablet Bulla skims over the outline of her new research project.
"You don't love him."
While Marron startles, snapping her textbook shut, Bulla sighs and turns to the man who she hasn't seen in over a week. Trunks walks up to them still in his business suit, looking as sharp and pristine as ever. It would appear as though today was the day both her father and brother decided it was time to return home.
That morning had been surreal.
When she had gone down to the kitchen for breakfast , the only person missing was her brother. Both Goten and her father were seated at the table, amicably eating the piles of food in front of them as though a few days prior one hadn't nearly murdered the other in that very room. As much as she wants to wax poetic about love and defend her relationship, she knows there is no point. She can tell by the way her brother is looking at her that he's seen too much to believe she has retained any of the bright eyed innocence he once imagined her to have is long gone.
"I don't really think you're capable of loving Goten," he sighs tiredly, prompting her to make space for him with a nudge of his knee. When she curls her legs beneath her, he takes a seat at the end of the lounger.
"Maybe," she hums. She slides the sunglasses down the ridge of her nose and the smile she gives him is laced with so much bitterness it sends a pang through his heart. "But I do love the person I am when he's around, so that's got to count for something, right?" She wiggles her eyebrows playfully and leans forward, bringing her left hand between them. "And just look at how much he loves me."
Sitting there on her ring finger, shimmering mockingly in the summer sun is a diamond so clear it looks as though it were made of glass. Even though he knew Goten had proposed to her, it is still shocking to see that engagement ring wrapped around his little sister's finger. After learning that she was going to be okay, he couldn't bear to be around either of them.
In their selfish idiocy, Goten and his sister had fucked things up beyond repair.
"In the beginning, I thought he was going to be good for you," Trunks said as he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. From over her textbook, Marron who is seated on the lounger beside them, gives him a sharp look in warning.
"He is good for me," Bulla agrees as she fondly admires the ring on her finger.
"But you're not good for him." Trunks turns to look at his sister in time to see her smile fall. "Yeah you're screwed up and selfish, but you're my sister, and I fucking love you." There is pain in his eyes and when he speaks, there is a frantic edge to his voice. "But that's my best friend you're messing with, and you're really fucking him up. You've got him so twisted he doesn't know which way is up."
"Oh, that must be why he let his dick fall into some blue haired bimbo's hands," Marron mumbles from behind her book.
Trunks bristles and glares at the blonde girl, but she doesn't bother looking up.
"After the shit I saw- after seeing you like that, all disgusting and covered in bruises- after dad fucking wrecked him." With each word he seems to deflate, and soon he is hunched over with his hands cradling his head. "Neither of you get to say anything about what he did. It was an accident- it was my fault really. I encouraged it. And the disgusting part is, he really did think it was you." At the memory, he bitterly laughs into his hands. "And let me tell you, that was a ton of fun to deal with once he sobered up. Whatever you did to him before you and your little friend decided to fuck off for a month really messed him up."
She doesn't even argue with him.
She isn't even a little mad to hear that he pushed Goten some girl's way just because he was not handling her unexplained avoidance well. She is too focused on the raw emotions he is expressing as he tells her all of the same things that she has already told herself.
Bulla doesn't say a word, she just sits there and soaks up all of her brother's pain.
"And dad, he's so pissed about all of this- he said that the same night we stumbled home drunk, he could smell that girl all over Goten. Of course he didn't say anything to either of us. He wanted to see what Goten would do. If he would come forward." Trunks is feeling so terribly tired of all this. For the past few weeks, each day Goten wouldn't hear back from his sister slowly chipped at him until there seemed to be a perpetual dark cloud hovering over him. He'd never seen his friend so miserable. A few nights ago when he took his friend out to one of their old haunts, he noticed how the more his despondent friend drank, the more his eyes would linger on a girl with long blue hair. In his equally inebriated state, it had seemed like a good idea to push his best friend towards the blue haired girl in the hopes of cheering him up- after all, at the time Bulla didn't seem to care enough about Goten to bother returning his calls. "You've only been home for a few months and look at what you're doing to our family- to my friend."
"I'm not doing anything, Trunks." Bulla takes a deep steadying breath to calm her nerves and gives her brother a watery apologetic smile. "You have to believe me, I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I'm really am sorry, but I'm just trying to make the best of it."
"But you don't love him. I know you don't," he says with an edge of agitation. He pulls off his coat, and because he likes things compulsively in order, neatly folds it in half before hanging it across his leg. "Goten doesn't know you like I do. He'll see what he wants to see, but I know what I saw. I know you. That night you came home, when you lost your shit- you were hallucinating weren't you, Bulla?" The immediate spike in her heart rate lets him know how close to the truth he is, and he can't stop himself from asking the question that has been rolling around in the back of his mind these past few days. "Who was it that you saw? Who was it that had you begging so disgracefully, like some whore off the street?" He has to take a deep calming breath because he can feel his irritation crackling dangerously below his skin.
"Trunks, that's enough!" Marron says sternly, slamming her textbook shut. "She doesn't remember any of that shit. Let it go!"
Bulla doesn't need to say anything. The rapid beating of her heart and the acute scent of her discomfort tell him all that he needs to know.
"Don't let yourself forget who you are. You're a fucking Briefs. That guy who hurt you- he's nothing but a piece of shit stuck on the bottom of your shoe. You are better than he could ever dream of being," Trunks said seriously. He regrets not telling her that years ago, maybe then she would have avoided letting men use her like garbage; as though she wasn't the intelligent heiress of a billion-zeni corporation.
"No, I'm not," Bulla said softly. "I'm not better than him."
"What?" he stammers. He looks at her in surprise, not having actually expected a response. With her delicate state, he hadn't meant to come to her spewing all these things he wasn't really sure he wanted to answers to.
"He is better than either of us could ever be," Bulla says wistfully. "He's perfect and he's good-too good for me."
"Bulla," Marron hisses in warning.
"So tell me, who's this perfect guy that likes to leave his girls all fucked up, Bulla?" Trunks finds himself asking. After seeing her lose her mind like that, he no longer thinks it had been a coincidence that he found her defiled and bruised all those weeks ago on her bathroom floor. "Who is he? Tell me- that way I can go and fuck him up. Then I won't have to worry about some sick fuck being the reason my friend winds up heartbroken."
The murderous intent in his eyes is clear as day, and Bulla can't help but scoff.
"If I were a gambling man, I'd be willing to bet all my zeni that it's the same sick fuck who left you all messed up. Is he the one who left you, Bulla?" Even though her expression is flat, he can hear her heart pounding rapidly in her chest. "If that fetus wasn't giving off an energy nearly as strong as your own, I would doubt it was even Goten's"
"Okay, children- break it up!" Marron snaps, impulsively tearing a page out of her textbook, crunching it in her hand and throwing it in the general direction of his face. "What's with this idiotic inquisition of yours? You're stressing your sister out. That's your little nephew or niece in there-" Marron says as she points at her friends flat stomach. "So unless you want to responsible for it spontaneously falling out of your sister's vagina in a bloody clump, I suggest either you cool it, or you leave."
"Okay, you're right. I'm sorry Marron, I got a little carried away." Trunks raises his hands up in surrender and lets out a dry laugh as he tries to will away his pent up anger. He would probably be joining his father in the G.R. after this just to relieve all of these pent up emotions, and then find someone down for a quick, dirty fuck. "I didn't mean to get us both so worked up." He stretches his legs out in front of him, and squirms awkwardly in his seat as he reaches for something in the pocket of his slacks. He feels his sisters eyes on him, wary and observant, and he feels foolish for antagonizing a pregnant girl. He pulls a silver ring out of his pocket.
Satisfied that the danger has passed, Marron sticks nose back into her book looking for all intents and purposes as though she wasn't listening to every word exchanged between them. From how nonchalant she appears, he has a feeling that none of this is new to her. He still remembers them as children; all sweet innocent smiles and girlish giggles, and wonders how in the hell they became so jaded when the world they live in has been so full of peace.
"I mean really- what the hell are we even arguing about?"Trunks asks as he leans forward and places the ring on top of her bare knee. "I'm sorry."
"I need you to know, I do care for Goten. I don't want to hurt him," Bulla looks up at him, and reflected in the blue of her eyes that are so similar to his, he can tell that she truly believes what she is saying . "I know it was wrong to leave him hanging for weeks like that, but at the time I was just so confused- and yeah, I still don't have it all figured out, but I think I need him." Unable to meet his gaze, she picks up the ring off her knee and when she slides it over her thumb, he hears a low familiar zap, and suddenly her ki disappears along with that of the little monstrous brat growing inside of her. "When he's with me, I can pretend I'm the girl he thinks I am. Someone good and normal."
"What are you even talking about? You are good and normal." Trunks groans, wearily pinching the bridge of his nose. "I love the both of you, and I don't want to see either of you get hurt, but I just know, even if you don't mean to- you're going to hurt him. And without him, I think you'll hurt yourself." When he looks up at her, it is with a tired smile pulling at his lips, and when he speaks there is a hint of astonishment in his voice. "This is all just so screwed up. Two months ago, I never imagined things would end up like this."
Time passes and soon the days of clear blue skies and of evenings spent exchanging sweet kisses with the youngest Son beneath the glow of fireflies has come to an end.
With the change of the season, Bulla forces herself to move on.
Stuck on the compound, she finds ways to keep herself occupied. She throws herself into her research, and spends her days once again getting to know her family and the half saiyan who foolishly loves her. She finds that she appreciates his handsome smile, and the way his palm feels against the swell of her belly. When he is with her, she is able to slip into this make believe world where it is easy to pretend what they have is normal. A place where she does not allow his memory follow her.
The past is too painful and the future too uncertain, so she does her best to stay in the present.
She focuses on her mother's heartfelt smile and the whisper of soft lace against her skin as the veil falling across her shoulders is adjusted. On how lovely Marron looks under the soft autumn sunlight with those crimson flowers entwined in her hair. She does everything she can to avoid catching her reflection in the full length mirror behind her.
"You look beautiful," Bulma says, running her hands down over the nonexistent fly-aways on her daughter's fringe.
"Yeah, you really do." Marron is in front of her, painting her lips a deep crimson. The blonde gives her a playful smirk. "You look so good, if it wasn't for that little bun you've got popping out of the oven, you probably could have fooled people into believing this was a real wedding."
"Even with your little belly, you still look beautiful." Luckily, before Bulma's gave her arm a smack, Marron had already pulled the lipstick away from Bulla's face. "But, I still don't understand why you decided to wait so long. It took a miracle to get the dress fitted."
The dress was originally worn by her grandmother at her own very posh and ostentatious wedding. It was the same wedding dress her mother wore when she married her father, at a ceremony even more quaint than the one she would be having.
"I told you, I didn't want a summer wedding," Bulla sighs. It may have seemed silly, but she didn't want her wedding to become a part of the many painful and beautiful memories she already had of this summer.
"Sucks that you have to have your honeymoon here, though," Marron says, taking a seat on the tufted ottoman by Bulla's bed.
"It's okay. She's rich," Bulma laughs. "Once my grand-baby is born, she can travel wherever she wants to, whenever she wants to. The sky isn't even the limit."
With her legs crossed, and a finger pointed at her, Marron warms, "Oh yeah and Bulla, it doesn't matter that it's going to be your wedding night okay? Nothings changed-the only sex you can have tonight is oral. Got it? Doctor's orders." With one arm propped behind her, Marron reclines on the ottoman and ignores the embarrassed flush on the bride's face. "And by that I mean you can only give it- you're pregnancy is so fucked up, we aren't sure how your body would react to that kind of stimulation."
At this Bulma gives a little sigh of empathy. "When you put it all together- the wedding night in your childhood home, the lack of sex- it all just sounds kind of disappointing, doesn't it?"
"It's fine," Bulla shrugs. With her frequent bouts of nausea and fatigue, sex was the last thing on her mind. Well, specifically sex with Goten; sometimes she couldn't stop her mind from wandering down that dangerous path. "It will just be like every other night, only when we wake up we'll be married."
Bulla does her best to ignore the pity in her friend's smile.
Being careful to avoid the mirror in her periphery, she turns around to look outside her bedroom window. There is a small commotion of activity on the lawn, with Chi-Chi at the helm, overseeing the set up for her son's wedding. She tries not to focus on her future mother-in-law. It hurts when she does, so she looks past her, and as expected sees the lights on in the gravity chamber.
Much to her father's displeasure, Goten wound up moving into Capsule Corporation. Between his success in the martial arts community and her family's fortune, they could have easily afforded a place of their own. It was the high-risk status of her pregnancy that been the determining factor. All things considered, living in Capsule Corporation was the best option. Residency started up a few months ago, and with Marron gone and Goten spending most of his time on his newest ventures, she was grateful to have both her family and the bustle of Capsule Corporation to keep her mind occupied.
Once she is well enough
It took her father the longest to adapt.
Even after returning home, for weeks there had been a palpable tension between him and everyone else, and in the back of her mind the kai's words remained an unpleasant echo. Then one day, after months spent purposely ignoring her, while she had been staring out the kitchen window, lost in thoughts of genetically enhanced glial cells and lovely red leaves, her father appeared beside her. He scoffed and in his own unique way of making peace, told her what a terrible irony it had been to realize how alike she and her mother were; both fiercely intelligent and beautiful, yet somehow idiotic enough to allow something like this to happen.
She cringes to imagine the consolatory conversation between Goten and her father.
It was wild to think in a few hours, donned in his formal saiyan attire, her father would be handing her over to her new husband.
Bulla is drawn out of her thoughts when the door opens, and she hears Chi-Chi's voice behind her. When she turns around she can see the stars dancing in the older woman's eyes.
"Oh my, Bulla! You look so lovely." The awe in her voice makes Bulla's stomach plummet. "I'm so glad that you are marrying Goten, and in a few months I'll have a new grand-baby. You've made this old woman so happy!"
"Thanks," Bulla winces.
"Bulma," Chi-chi says, turning her attention to the other woman. "Were you able to get ahold of Goku? Do you know if he will be able to make it?" The question makes Bulla turn back around sharply and firmly grasp the window pane. Chi-Chi continues, obvious to the brides sudden distress. "The caterer needs to know so he can know how much food to have on standby."
Since that night, no one had seen hide nor hair of Son Goku.
She thinks her father is the one who's taken his absence the hardest. Knowing his rival was training off the planet and getting stronger had only fed his near constant irritation.
"I'm going to try calling Whis in a few hours to remind him." She hears her mother say. "Tell the caterer to plan accordingly. It's his son's wedding after all, how could he miss it?"
At this, both of the older women laugh as though sharing a private joke. Eventually it all just becomes too much- standing there in a wedding dress, listening to Chi-Chi and her mother talk so casually about Goku, the man who's child she's carrying- the man who's son she is about to marry.
She lurches forward, barely grabbing an empty shoe box off the floor in time to avoid vomiting all over the carpet.
Sensing her friend's distress, Marron hands the soiled box to the older women and uses her authority as a physician to usher both of the women out of the room. When they are alone, the blonde asks, "Are you sure you can do this?"
"Yes." Bulla manages a weak reply through sharp breaths. "I think I just need a few minutes to clear my head. I'll be fine."
"Right." Marron's expression says she believes otherwise, but once Bulla's face regains some color, she leaves her friend alone collect her thoughts.
With her eyes fixed on the floor, Bulla follows the familiar layout of her bedroom until her bare feet meet porcelain tile. She grabs her toothbrush off the counter and finds that by focusing only on the movements of her hands, it is easier to ignore the blurred outline of blue and white reflected in the mirror ahead of her. She washes her mouth out. The strong taste of mint only makes her nauseous.
In a stupor, she walks out of her bathroom, and forgetting to keep her eyes on the floor, she meets her reflection head on.
A girl so painfully beautiful is staring back at her.
Her mouth is slightly parted in shock, and painted the same shade of red as the autumn leaves. With a curtain of lace cascading over her long, blue tresses, all the way down to her bare shoulders, she wears a simple gown of embroidered white satin. The only thing out of place is the small bump of her belly and the despair in her eyes.
In the mirror, she sees the familiar girl's features fall into one of sorrow. She doesn't want Goten- not really. What she wants- what she wants is something she was never meant to have. It isn't love, not even close, yet in that moment it feels like it is everything.
She is getting married today.
Her breath catches in her throat and the floor begins to sway beneath her feet. She stumbles backwards, suddenly overcome with a terrible unease that starts the churning in her stomach all over again.
None of this feels right.
No longer able to meet those morose blue eyes, she turns away from the mirror. Despite all the reasons she shouldn't think of him, she still finds herself wondering; and all that wondering fills her heart with a terrible longing.
She can't do this.
Her bed is a mess of strewn clothes, and wedding trinkets, so she stumbles to the center of the room, and with her body feeling as heavy as her heart she sinks to the floor.
She raises one pale hand above her, towards the shadows on the ceiling, and there is something almost deliberate about the glint of her silver ring in the autumn light. Knowing nothing would ever come of it does nothing to temper her emotions, or stop the slow, pained ache that accompanies each beat of her heart. She wants him now as terribly as she always has. She'd been a fool to think otherwise.
She doesn't want to marry Goten.
In the fragility of her mind, she cannot understand why he has left her here. Alone, to walk in the fallout of their one shared night. She doesn't know what she would say or do, but against all sense she just so badly needs to see him.
She needs him to tell her that it's all right.
She needs him to tell her what to do.
She brings her hand closer to her face and stares at the silver band around her thumb. She can't explain it, but just as it had that night on Mount Paozu, she feels the innate pull of something gentle and coaxing. It is a soft reassuring whisper against her consciousness, and it tells her that if she were to call him, he would come. She raises her other hand, pinching the silver ring between her thumb and forefinger, and draws in a deep breath.
Lying there on the floor, lost in a sea of silk and lace, she slides the silver band off her finger and waits.
.