39
VEGETA'S anger was churning as a fire-seed in the pit of his stomach. Tarble, Gure, and Kakarot's mate weren't back yet, and Bulma's pains were increasing, both in intensity and frequency.
He didn't know how long he sat with his Woman late into the night, diligently dabbing at her sweat soaked forehead, brushing strands of her blue hair out of her eyes whenever he could, and holding onto her violently trembling hands.
Bulma could no longer tell where one pain stopped and the next one started. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't control the whimpers that escaped from the back of her throat that morphed into loud cries, the terrified sobs, or low groans.
Vegeta was growing increasingly agitated, not to mention sending his mind insane with worry. The only thing he could do was sit with Bulma and rub small circles into her spine and over her stomach in the hopes of easing her pains.
She did her best to make him think it was helping, though Vegeta wasn't stupid. He could see it had no effect. Somewhere around midnight, she felt the strain and pressure of their baby moving further downward, Bulma arched her back and gritted her teeth even harder. She squeezed her eyes shut and threw her head back, grabbing Vegeta's hand in a strong vice grip, like nothing he'd ever felt before.
"Where's Chi-Chi?" Bulma begged through gritted teeth. "Where are…Tarble and Gure, Geta?" she wept, slick tears sliding down the front of her temple. Vegeta could only hold her hand and stay right by her side every second, even if she yelled at him for it.
"She's coming," he barked in a gruff voice. "She'll be here soon, or I'll kill Tarble myself," he snarled, although he wasn't sure of his own words.
Thank Kami, only a few minutes later, Chi-Chi barreled her way through the doorframe of their master bedroom, Tarble and Gure behind her, looking utterly drenched and miserable but otherwise unharmed.
Goku's wife waltzed right in the room without even waiting to be invited, shrugging out of her rain poncho, and handed it to Gure, who tottered off somewhere to hang it up for her, and made her way towards Bulma and Vegeta. Chi-Chi's face was tired, but the seriousness of the woman's gait and the way she held herself made it clear that helping her friend was the only thing with which she was concerned.
Bolting angrily from the edge of their bed, Vegeta puffed out his chest and blocked Kakarot's wife's way, preventing Chi-Chi from taking another step.
"Where in the hell have you been, Woman?" he seethed at her, the edges of his hair flickering from black to yellow as he struggled to control his anger at Kakarot's Woman's very late arrival. He was only barely able to contain his full fury. Bulma simply watched as Chi-Chi approached, perhaps for the first time in her life, relieved to see the temperamental woman that even Goku feared.
Chi-Chi merely huffed in frustration, raising her eyebrows at Vegeta and took a defensive stance as she rested her hands on her hips, refusing to budge, much less revert her hard gaze.
"It took your brother longer than expected to get through that," she snapped, pointing a shaking finger towards the raging thunderstorm outside," she informed Vegeta and Bulma haughtily. "And you want to watch your mouth how you speak to me, Saiyan King, or I'll turn right back around and go home, and you can deliver your baby yourself!" she warned threateningly, wagging her finger in his face as she stomped her foot in her frustration.
Vegeta gnashed his teeth and angrily swatted Kakarot's bitch of a mate's finger out of his face. "Don't you point that fucking finger at me!" he growled, though before he could speak further, he heard his mate give a startled cry from behind.
"No!" Bulma pleaded from the bed, trying to prop herself up on her elbows in the hopes of stopping Chi-Chi from leaving. "Don't go. Please," she begged, tears rolling down her cheeks now.
Upon hearing Bulma's desperate, pleading voice, Chi-Chi turned to face her acquaintance.
Chi-Chi's previously hardened expression and her tone towards Vegeta softened considerably. She nudged past Vegeta, jostling his shoulder on purpose in the process and took Bulma's shaking and outstretched hand. She brushed back her blue bangs off her forehead and threw Bulma's ponytail off her shoulders and tried to soothe the frantic soon-to-be young new mom.
"Don't worry, Bulma," Chi-Chi told her, shooting her an almost kind smile that for a moment, made Bulma feel immensely relieved. "I just had to put this one here in his place," she teased. Chi-Chi jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Vegeta and rolled her eyes. "I won't be leaving."
"Tch," Vegeta scoffed and he too, rolled his eyes as he huffed and folded his arms across his chest and turned sharply away. "I still think we should have gotten a doctor, Woman. A real one."
It was meant as an insult to Chi-Chi, but Kakarot's wife merely blinked as she glared at Bulma's husband and didn't even miss a beat.
"Well, I'm better than any doctor, bub, because all doctors are sadists who like to play God and watch lesser people scream!" she yelled.
She perched herself on the edge of the bed and patted Bulma's hand with no small measure of affection. Bulma settled back against her mountain of pillows, still raggedly gasping against her growing pains as Chi-Chi swiped aside the blankets of their bed she was resting under and began to lift her nightgown, little more than an oversize t-shirt, but it was loose and comfortable.
"Now, why don't we take a look and see where you are?" Chi-Chi smiled. Bulma flinched and let out a pained hiss as Goku's wife began to probe her belly, feeling for the position of their baby.
"He's moved way down in my hips," Bulma groaned, keeping her eyes squeezed tightly shut. "I can feel it," she whispered, biting down on her lip.
Bulma chanced a glance at Vegeta, who stood watching her fiercely and protectively over Chi-Chi's shoulder, almost to the point of being a nuisance. Bulma tried not to roll her eyes at that.
She tried to send her husband a reassuring smile, though they both knew it didn't meet her eyes. Chi-Chi nodded and pushed Bulma's knees up. "I have to check and see where its head is," she told her, shooting her an apologetic look as she slid her skillful fingers inside of her. "This isn't going to be the most comfortable, but it will help."
Bulma gasped and bit her lip at the discomfort. Laying there exposed and vulnerable as she was, Bulma was kind of surprised that she wasn't really embarrassed at Goku's wife seeing her like this, but she realized she no longer gave a damn.
She just wanted their baby out of her, now.
"Well, the good news is, you're fully dilated and the baby's starting to come down," Chi-Chi smiled at her as she removed her hand and immediately reached for a cloth with which to clean her hands off. "Are you feeling the urge to push yet?" she asked, quirking a brow at Bulma.
"No." Bulma shook her head, her ponytail swishing slightly as she did so, her bangs drenched in sweat.
"You will soon enough," Goku's wife told her knowingly. "The first thing I guess we should do then is get you out of this bed and walk around," she ordered in a tone that suggested to them both that this was something not open for discussion.
Bulma's blue eyes widened, and she shook her head. "N-no, I—I can't," she stammered in a protest, shimmers of sweat glittering on her scalp.
But Chi-Chi was already nodding as if to tell Bulma there was no point in arguing with her. "Yes, you can. You need to get up and walk around. It will help bring your baby faster, Briefs."
She took Bulma by the arms and started to pull her up. Bulma objected with a loud hair-raising scream from the pain of another spasm.
Already on edge, Vegeta bolted forward and took his wife from Kakarot's mate's grasp and smacked Chi-Chi's hand away. However, neither did he refuse the other Woman's orders. Gently, he helped Bulma to stand and tried to steady his wife on her own two feet. Slowly and carefully, he began to walk in circles with her around the room.
"Sheesh, should she really be moving around so much right now?" he growled, speaking more to Chi-Chi and Prince Tarble in this moment than to Bulma. Tarble was perched on a stool in the corner of the room, looking utterly lost and afraid.
"But Chi-Chi just said that this would help her have an easier time delivering the baby!" he protested, having to raise his voice as Bulma gasped and cried as another contraction ravaged her body. Unable to stand upright, she clung onto Vegeta's arms like the Saiyan King was her lifeline.
"Tarble, Gure!" Chi-Chi commanded towards the pair who were trying their best to stay out of her way. "You're not going to be hiding in the corner. Come here and help me," she demanded.
Vegeta shot Tarble a pointed look as if to say, "Just do it," and offered his younger brother a nod.
The pair, somewhat timidly, did as they were told. They helped Goku's wife in laying out the items she might need to bring Bulma and Vegeta's baby into the world. Tarble's eyes grew wide and round with a look of abject horror when he saw the knives and cutting sheers and started to protest.
But before Tarble could so much as say anything, she instructed them to lay one of the woolen blankets on the ground, and then cover it with a quilt for padding. "Why here?" Gure asked.
"Because this is where Bulma's going to give birth to her son," Chi-Chi answered quite casually.
Nearby, still nestled against Vegeta's chest, Bulma heard the comment. Her head shot around so fast to glower at Chi-Chi that Vegeta had to move his head back to avoid connecting with hers.
"What?!" she screamed, her face paling. "I can't give birth to my baby on the fucking ground!" she nearly screamed, appalled, pulling a face.
"Well, you can't lay on that exquisite looking soft bed to do it," Chi-Chi pointed out as she peered at the oversized king mattress, the warm source of comfort that Bulma had hoped to bring her baby into the world into. "You won't be able to push hard enough when the time comes. It's okay, Bulma, I've done this before when Gohan was born when I had him in my own home too. You'll be fine." She nodded her head, satisfied with her choice. "Here is going to do for you just fine, dear."
As if Kami himself had heard that Bulma was to the point of being ready to deliver her baby into the world, at that moment, her face contorted in agony. "Oh, god," she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut. "H—help me down, Vegeta," she growled.
"What? Where?" Vegeta demanded, determined to take his mate to wherever she saw fit to deliver the baby in a safe space. "Bulma?"
Bulma desperately pointed towards the pile that Chi-Chi had created with Tarble's help. "Here, right there," she pleaded through gritted teeth. "I need to push, now, right now, it's coming," she whispered as her entire body seized and tensed, the pressure building within her stomach. "Fuck."
Seeing no other choice, though he didn't like it, Vegeta eased Bulma down gently onto the quilt.
She gasped and panted against the overwhelming, burning need in her body to push.
"Vegeta." Chi-Chia pointed towards Vegeta. "Sit her up and kneel behind her," she snapped. "Give her something solid to lean against so she can have support for this. If you're going to stick around, then you might as well make yourself useful," she finished as she turned to Bulma. "Pull your knees up," she ordered. "When the next pain comes, push down against it as hard as you can."
Bulma silently nodded her understanding and reached for Vegeta's hands. He took hers, flinching as she gripped with enough strength to break his fingers as her next contraction started.
Bulma's face grew panicked as the pain mounted and worsened, though Chi-Chi stayed calm. "Take a deep breath, Bulma," she ordered. She watched Bulma comply. "Now push," Goku's wife directed. This was one time Bulma was perhaps grateful for her friend's wife's bossiness.
Bulma did as she was told. She drew in a large breath, held it, and forced her muscles to bear down as hard as she possibly could against the baby, working hard to bring their son into the world. "Push!" Vegeta echoed to Bulma, sounding almost angry with her, though she knew her husband's brazenness came from a place of fear.
She merely groaned her answer. Bulma tried to stop to take a break when she ran out of air and keep going. She gritted her teeth again and complied. She felt at least a little bit of movement, and her body began to stretch and burn as she felt their baby move downward.
When the pain subsided, she was left aching and gasping for air.
"Keep going. You're doing well," Chi-Chi smiled in encouragement. Bulma blearily looked up through her teary gaze in search of her mate's face. She couldn't be sure, but she swore Vegeta offered her a little half smile through his worry, and she knew she felt something warm and coarse press against her sweat-soaked forehead, and she knew he'd kissed her forehead to help her feel better.
It didn't even work, but that was beside the point. It was the thought that counted.
Only a few seconds had passed, she began to tense again as another pain started. She could hear the others giving her encouragement and orders as she breathed, pushed, groaned, and pushed again. Over and over this pattern repeated until her body was burning with so much pain that she was exhausted, that she was starting to fear their son might never come out of her.
"Bulma, Bulma, stop! Stop crying and look into my eyes! Look at me, right at my face!" Chi-Chi's tone was shrill and harsh, but confident.
It allowed Bulma to just barely focus through the haze of agony she was in. She nervously made eye contact and tried to breathe deeply and calmly.
This was it, soon she would see their baby. A passing fear overcame Bulma for a moment, as she held onto Vegeta's hand, but then was replaced by the same fierce determination she'd felt these last few months. The powers of existence and nature took over, and with a strength Bulma didn't even know she'd had, began to bear down hard, pushing their son out of her womb.
The pain was horrible, worse than anything Bulma had ever felt in her life, stretching, and burning her insides, but she didn't let that stop her. She propelled herself onward, feeling the head begin to emerge between her legs.
She saw a smile appear on Chi-Chi's face, but it didn't matter one bit. She knew that everything would be alright as long as Vegeta was with her. With a forceful push and a near scream, Bulma felt her baby's head emerge from her body.
She lay back against Vegeta, gasping through the pain as slick tears rolled down her cheeks.
Chi-Chi reached for a small cloth and handed it to Prince Tarble. "Here, kid, hold this, you're gonna catch it," she told the wide-eyed young Saiyan Prince to hold it between Bulma's legs.
Seeing Tarble scrunch his face in disgust and revulsion and actively trying not to look to preserve his brother's mate's modesty would have been funny but laughing was the last thing Bulma felt like doing right now.
She just wanted the pain to stop.
If Bulma had thought Tarble's face was white before, it was nothing compared to how he looked now. "Catch it?" he repeated numbly in disbelief, as though he'd not heard Chi-Chi properly. "Me?" he questioned, shocked. "Oh, Kami, Chi-Chi, no!" He turned to Bulma and shot her a pleading look. "Well, can't you just…underhand it, kay, I've never been good at sports!" he groaned, to which Chi-Chi responded by giving the young Saiyan a harsh slap by backhanding him across the cheek. He blinked and slowly but surely came back to himself.
"You won't hurt it," Chi-Chi snapped in a clipped and curt tone, sounding beyond frustrated. "Now get ready, kid," she said, seeing Bulma's body beginning to take over once more. "It's time."
Bulma nodded and gritted her teeth, pushing with all her might. She was so close, and she knew it. Her whole body was on fire, and she thought she felt something tear, but she didn't stop now.
She couldn't. No pain had ever been this bad in her life or as intense. She was almost delirious as the trauma of her ordeal began to overtake her. She was no longer in control as her muscles worked forcefully to bring a new life into the world.
For all her strength and resolve, Bulma could not overcome the pain, and her bloodcurdling screams carried on into the early hours of the morning, only barely drowned out by the thunder outside, but they brought with them the announcement of a birth, a new half-Saiyan life brought into the world to continue Vegeta's peoples' race.
Then, miraculously, Bulma's own pain-ravaged scream was replaced by the sweet sound of their son's angry, first healthy cry.
Opening her eyes, through her haze of exhaustion, Bulma looked down to behold the plump, screaming, purple bundle that Tarble eagerly held up to her and Vegeta.
"Your son, brother. Bulma, he's beautiful," Trunks' nephew exclaimed, his expression filled with joy and wonder as he placed the baby into his mother's waiting arms, stepping back and out of the room with Gure while Chi-Chi cleaned up the birthing area to give the new parents their space.
Bulma felt as if she were in a hazy dream after these long nine months. Her painful ordeal completely forgotten, she drew her newborn son, Trunks, close to her breast. She gasped, laughed, cried, and smiled all at the same time. The new, foreign feeling of being a mother to this precious half-Saiyan babe in her arms was overwhelming to her. She was barely able to breathe, but not because of her exertion.
"He looks like you, Vegeta," she croaked out in a hoarse whisper, peeling back the folds of the blankets so her husband could see his heir's face. "Except the hair. But he's got your nose and your forehead."
The wriggling, crying little baby in her arms took her breath away. She never realized she could love something so wholly and unconditionally until now when she held her own child. In his precious tiny face, she saw traces of her father. She saw Tights. She saw her mother, she saw her husband. The baby had Vegeta's strong, proud features most of all, except his eyes, when he would open his eyes later, they would reveal his mother's eyes.
His little head was capped with a fuzz of light lavender. Bulma wasn't sure where that came from, but she decided she liked it.
Although only minutes old, she could tell their son possessed Vegeta's boldness and his fight. With his son in her arms, Bulma allowed herself to collapse back against Vegeta, and felt his arms wind around them both in a protective little embrace, holding them both tight, and looking prouder than he had in a long time. She didn't think she'd seen him look like this since he'd managed to defeat Frieza.
Vegeta helped Bulma off her feet and up into their bed, nestling underneath the covers once Chi-Chi had helped Bulma clean herself up by giving her a bath and setting aside some towels, as it was made clear she would bleed for awhile after, and settled her into a fresh oversize t shirt to sleep in. Baby Trunks slumbered peacefully in her embrace.
"He's sleeping," he grunted after a while, as Chi-Chi eventually bid them farewell and Tarble left with her to take her back home to her and Goku's hut in the mountains. "You should rest," Vegeta barked in a harsh-sounding command, though seeping beneath the surface of his usual gruffness was affection. "Why don't you rest, Bulma," he sighed, nestling his chin on top of her hair, strands of her ponytail tickling his chin.
"I don't want to sleep, Geta," Bulma smiled at him. "I don't want to miss anything. I want to cherish every moment with our little Saiyan prince," she beamed, lifting the baby slightly to kiss his forehead, and then rested against Vegeta.
"There will be time for that," Vegeta murmured as he continued keeping his face pressed against Bulma's hair. "He'll need you again in a few hours. Sleep while you can, Woman," he commanded. Peering down, he smirked to himself as he could already see the deep rhythmic rise and fall of Bulma's chest and realized she had already fallen asleep in his arms.
As the now much lighter rain continued to fall outside and his family slept, Vegeta held Bulma and baby Trunks in his protective embrace, already vowing silently to be a better provider and father than fucking Kakarot, that his heir would grow up ten times stronger than any of his brats.
He would watch over them both through the night, keeping them safe, and feeling grateful that life had given him a second chance and bestowed upon him treasures with which he'd been blessed.
Treasures that were only fit for a Saiyan King.