Chapter 39. Sons

When Vegeta returned to their chambers, filled with jubilance and exited to tell his little mate the good news, he found her ever kipping. She didn't seem to have moved at all in the time he had been on New Namek. She still lay in the odd position she had grown so fond of lately, half propped up against the pillows with her back, her legs drawn up in a widened position under the covers and her little hands clasped to her ankles. He figured it served as a substitute for lying curled up on her side which used to be her favourite sleeping-position. Presently there was no way she could curl herself up around that huge belly.

A bit disappointed not to have found her sitting up in anticipation of his return, he bent over her and lightly put his hand to her flushed cheek. He noticed that her skin was hot to the touch from the contunious toil that the pregnancy put on her body. She didn't react as he followed those fierce scars on her face with his fingers, for a while captivated by the savage beauty of his little mate. He shook her shoulder in a half-hearted attempt of waking her, finding it rather cruel to retrieve her from a place that made her look so serene despite that marred exterior, even now that he could tell her that their wishes had been granted and that they were officially on their way home.

He kissed her small pouting mouth where the beginnings of a trickle of drool were forming at the corner, something that continued to charm him to bits. His hand automatically slipped beneath the covers to rest on her huge belly. The skin of her swell was so stretched that he could actually feel the strain it was under. She was literally about to burst. His daughter was calm. This was no surprise to him. Lately the kitten slept as much as his little mate did and it seemed she too had finally come to the end of her strength, drained by the mutual struggle she and her mother had been locked in for moons. She had stopped growing and building her base power, clearly readying herself for her coming into this world when she would be needing her strength. As did her mother. Vegeta rose to leave them to it.

Back in the front room the low table in between the two armchairs had been set up with several plates of food and Vegeta tucked into a pot of stew rather famished. The food had been deep-frozen for conservation on the space-travels of the Marauder and it probably wasn't nearly as good as fresh Saiyajin chow, it still made him recall feasts at the long table in the immense great hall of the palace were he had spent his childhood. The home he was at last returning to. He ladled spoonfuls of the stew into his mouth, his mind drifting off to the bustle of that great hall.

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A fire roared within the vast hearth on the far side of the brightly lit hall and radiated of the high, black stone walls surrounding him. The clanging of cutlery and merry talking and laughing of the people joining them at the high table tonight filled his ears as he stuffed his face with everything his short arms could reach. From the corner of his eye he saw his father at his side, looking young and vibrant, smiling down on him. The expression on the King's brown whiskered face was merry and appreciative, as if it pleased him to see his son enjoy his food so much. The ruler of Vegetasei gave him an approving nod and fatherly wink and returned his attention to his guests. He drank wine and roared with laughter at Tragus who was entertaining everyone with one of his many stories.

Vegeta now looked to his mother at the King's other side. She was laughing too, yet inhibited. Subdued his mother was, composed and sober. She was the perfect opposite to his spirited and merry father. Even if the Queen was silent and collected, she drew the attention of their guests who revered her for her beauty and gentle ways. Vegeta beamed at her when her glittering dark eyes fell on him and she returned his smile. It was a charm, that smile and it drew the looks of many of the guests, all in awe of her. With those eyes, that smile and her long ebony hair cascading down her back like a shimmering sheet, she was as stunning as the Goddess of Victory herself.

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The rustle of movement made him return to the present with the image of the feast sharp in his mind. The happiness Vegeta felt at the memory of his mother was only strengthened by what he found behind him.

Akane stood in the doorway, the unchecked mane of her dark hair framing her perfectly marred face that was still gentled by sleep. She looked at him through a shroud of long dark lashes, her normally hard yellowish eyes cloudy, golden and exceptionally heavy-lidded. She was clad in her spandex shorts and violently green shirt and since the shorts too were now too small to properly fit her, her perfectly round, huge belly was left naked to stand out in all its pride. She gave him that blinding smile that had made him love her and just like the first time, it knocked the breath right out of him.

"That looks so good." Akane said, mellowed by her long sleep, her voice even hoarser than usual due to the lack of use.

Vegeta couldn't tell whether she was talking about him or the food on the table in front of him because her half-lidded eyes swept both with equal desire as she closed the distance to where he sat.

With a yawn and a throaty moan she joined him in the armchair by slipping, or rather landing into his lap, thwarted by her huge belly. She was not at all bothered by the fact that he was still in the midst of supper and that she made it impossible for him to comfortably continue. She briefly rubbed her cheek against his in a more loving greeting and then turned her attention to the contents of the table.

Choosing a particularly large chunk of bread, she tore off a piece with her teeth and pointed out in between chewing: "You look very happy, ugly. I don't trust you when you look happy."

She snatched the pot of stew from him and started in on that ferociously.

"I made the wishes." Vegeta told her, noticing that he was indeed grinning like a fool as he pictured Akane seated at his left at the high table as his Queen, eating as ravenously as she was doing right now and all their guests staring at her, not in awe of her beauty like they had done with his mother, but because they were so utterly disgusted by her lack of table manners. "It worked. We're on our way to Vegetasei."

Akane halted in the middle of scarfing down the remnant of his stew, the spoon falling back into the pot with a clang.

"You're yanking my tail." she said giving him a suspicious look. "The ship is still moving. We haven't stopped."

"Not while you were awake, no." Vegeta said matter-of-factly.

A long time she was only capable of gawping at him and he seized this opportunity to nick back the pot of stew from her limp hands and finish it before she had time to recover. He knew that once she did, there would be nothing left for him.

"Vegeta!" Akane called at length, hopping up and down on his lap impatiently and snatching the hurriedly emptied pot away from him. "Stop eating and tell me everything that happened! Did you manage to wish everyone back?"

Vegeta relaxed into the chair rubbing his stomach contented and took his time to pick the remnant of stew from his teeth. His little mate grew more agitated with the second. He figured that since she had been sleeping when he returned from what had perhaps been the most important event of their lives, it was only fair to make her wait in anticipation a bit longer. It wasn't that he was vindictive, he just liked to annoy her. When she looked so tormented by his lack of interest in the matter that her cheeks glowed, the snarl that started curving her lips growing fiercer until it was so unnerving even he felt some apprehension at the sight of it, he at last told her what had happened on New Namek.

"Again with that? Why would we be considered evil?" Akane cut across him rather indignantly as he came to the point where Moori held his speech.

Vegeta only reluctantly abandoned his story, he had more to tell her. He knew better than to ignore her when her eyes spat fire like that so he replied plainly: "We were in the WTO."

Akane remained silent for a while and when she finally spoke, she did so very carefully. "I know that you believe your father willingly handed you over to Frieza... And I have been thinking about that a lot... It just doesn't make sense to me."

She started a very threatening growl deep in her throat when Vegeta made ready to interrupt and he decided to let her talk.

"Your father was meeting in secret with other leaders in the WTO who wanted out of their contract. Now he never talked to me about these things, but I overheard him speak to Tragus about it one time. About those other leaders wanting out. I think they were trying to come up with a way to step back from the WTO collectively. I believe your father wanted out as well and I believe that Frieza somehow forced his hand when your father allowed the WTO to take you away. You should have seen him, Vegeta. He was absolutely destroyed. He went to war for you. The first company was sent out to retrieve you within a fortnight of your departure. Why would your father do that if he had sent you away by choice?"

"He changed his mind along the way?" Vegeta suggested bitterly.

Akane looked at him very hard. "Why are you so bent on believing your father abandoned you?"

"Why are you so bent on believing he didn't?" Vegeta threw back, looking at her just as hard.

Akane bared her teeth at him in that familiar viscious way again, a warning sign that she was about ready to flip her lid.

"Alright, let's say his hand was forced, like you believe." Vegeta said more evenly. He wasn't looking for a fight with his little mate. "He still sought after a top position in an atrocious intergalactic empire that committed genocide on a daily bases. He chose that for us."

Akane was visibly putting effort into matching his calmness, which he appreciated. This topic could very well end up putting a rift between them and they both knew it. They needed to be willing to at least listen to the other's view point. That wasn't easy for either of them, proud and stubborn as they both were, but they were trying at least.

"It were quite a few predecessors down your line that did that. Maybe you are right, maybe he wanted a top position in the WTO like you say." Akane agreed. "And if so, then it was a choice that ruined us all, but we were given a second chance just like that Namekian told you. Doesn't your father deserve the same? Even if he made all the wrong choices?"

"I don't know." Vegeta admitted dourly.

"My brave mate." Akane took his face in her lethal little hands affectionately, her intense eyes searching him. She knew what he had lived through because of those choices, their bond made it so. She had lived through much of the same herself.

Akane put a fleeting kiss on his lips and asked: "If you can't find it in your heart to forgive your father, how will you be able to face him when you get home?"

Vegeta wanted to repeat that he didn't know, but swallowed it. It wasn't a very intelligent reply. Most of his life he spent trying to come to terms with himself for all the horrible things he did in order to enforce Frieza's rule and in the back of his mind was always the knowledge that his father had been the same as him. That they were both no different than Frieza or Cold: oppressors, tyrants that forced other races into slavery.

It was much later, after his arrival on Earth, that he distanced himself from this. He wasn't the oppressor, he was just another one of the oppressed, one of Frieza's slaves and he only did what he did to survive. It was then that he left his father behind too, all the pain and the disbelieve and the feeling of abandonment. He had simply stuffed it down so that he wouldn't have to deal with it. He didn't have that luxury anymore. It wouldn't be long before he found himself face to face with his father.

"I wonder what he will think about us." Vegeta mused, suddenly painfully aware of his mate's shared history with his father. Of that mark beneath her eye.

"Whatever I was to him, it is so long ago now." Akane said in an unconcerned fashion.

"Not to him, it isn't. He is brought back to the time just before Vegetasei's destruction. From his end you haven't been apart that long. He will still consider you his..." Vegeta almost couldn't get himself to say this out loud because the thought of his little mate with his father suddenly seemed wrong in so many ways. "…concubine."

Akane considered this, but almost immediately shrugged it off, though he noticed that she had some difficulty choosing the right words to spare his feelings because she refused to look at him when she said: "I was only ever... You are his son. All he cared about was getting you back. I think he will consider this a right fair deal." After that decisive conclusion she was disinclined to say any more about the matter and resumed eating.

Vegeta couldn't really fathom why this had become so difficult for him to face all of the sudden, he certainly hadn't any problems with it before. Then again, his father had been dead before and he hadn't expected having to confront the King with the fact that he had taken one of the man's concubines as his mate.

Akane sighed, seeing he was not about to let go of the subject and assured him: "Any commitment I had to your father was broken on the day of my reinstatement in the forces and he sent me on that last mission. He knows that too. Besides, everyone that came after your mother was mere pastime to him and you sure aren't the first Prince to cheat his father out of a lover. Look at Tarble the third."

"Oh yes, and that worked out splendidly." Vegeta said sarcastically.

King Tarble the third had taken the heads of his treacherous son and his whole garrison and put them on spikes to adorn the walls of the capital palace.

"Will you drop it? I can't undo it for you. I would if I could. I would have let you be my first and only, had I met you earlier in my life. I would have gone back in time to make it so, but I can't. So please, Vegeta, just let it go." Akane said very straightforward for once in her life.

"Fine." Vegeta muttered. "But I need you to find a way to fence off those memories because I can't deal with them."

"Enough." Akane demanded.

She stuffed her mouth with fat purple fruit that was familiar to Vegeta's eyes, yet he couldn't give a name to since it had been so long ago that he last ate it.

Akane nudged him with her elbow. "We should be celebrating. How about we have at it? I had a very filthy dream about you sorting me out. Of course in the dream I wasn't quite this fat, but you have shown yourself creative enough to work around that."

The way she sat there, with her cheeks bulging from the huge amount of fruit stashed away behind them, juice trickling down her chin and the mischief clear on her marred face, was as amusing as it was appealing to him. He lusted after her in all her stuffed, savage filthiness. He laughed and squeezed her delightful body appreciatively against him, seizing her wrist and lapping up the trail of fruit juice that was running down her arm.

"I would have made you my first and only as well." he returned.

Akane gave a small noise of content and dug her sticky hands in his hair to tilt up his face for a hard touch of lips, which he answered with as much enthusiasm. It had been far too long since he had a chance to sort her out and he trusted his creativity would not fail him. He hadn't experienced any trouble so far, no matter how she complained about her belly being in the way. It demanded a bit more improvisation and that was half the fun. Besides that, he rather liked her this fat.

As he turned her in his lap so that her back was against his chest and he was about ready to push down her shorts, something joined them in the front room. The blur of colour that whirled into the room was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

"What the bleeding hell?" Akane snarled roughly as she pushed herself out of his lap ever ready for action, end stages of her pregnancy or not.

Vegeta knew exactly what he had just seen and seconds later his son managed to correctly appear with his new instant-transmission technique.

"Father! I did it! I'm here!" Trunks cheered swelling with pride as he stumbled into the room seeking balance.

Though Vegeta was very glad to see him, the boy had horrible timing. Throwing a last wistful look at Akane's fine arse from where she stood with her hands on her hips in front of him, he rose from the armchair and complimented his son on his swift mastering of the technique.

"Did Kakarot teach you, Princeling?" Akane asked, sounding impressed. She had been trying to master instant transmission without any success.

"Yes, but father wished it for me." Trunks told her happily and he turned to Vegeta beaming. "Now I can visit you whenever I want."

Vegeta put his hand to his son's lavender-haired head with a curt nod of agreement and a fatherly wink, the same wink his own father had given him over the large table in the great hall of his memories. He remembered exactly the feeling of self-worth this had instilled in him and on Trunks it seemed to have the same effect.

The boy rushed to make him proud by giving a boastful recapitulation of how he managed to instant-transmit to Vegeta by thinking hard about him and concentrating on his energy.

"And," Trunks added smugly. "Goku-sama didn't know what hit him so fast I was gone."

Vegeta laughed and gave him a pat on the cheek. "Well done, boy."

Trunks, still glowing with pride, turned to Akane asking for her attention politely. "Captain?"

Trunks refused to call Akane Princess because it simply did not fit his grand views of her and Vegeta knew for a fact that it pleased his little mate that this was so.

"What?" Akane grunted meanwhile struggling to seat herself in the armchair with her huge belly. She sat back with a heartfelt sigh and put her little hands on the naked swell, giving it a destructive glare that made Vegeta snicker.

"Is my new sister coming soon?"

"I rather hope so." Akane replied still throwing bitter looks at the swell that was obstructing her view.

"Within a week or so." Vegeta clarified patiently to his son.

"Will she be born with a tail like Bra and I?"

"Yes." Vegeta answered.

"And will it be removed like ours?"

"No." Vegeta expected some fierce remark from his little mate to this appalling suggestion and he glanced back at her when nothing came.

The reason why was quite plain. In the thirty seconds that she hadn't spoken, she had somehow managed to fall fast asleep splayed in the armchair. He smiled, albeit ruefully, at this food stained, sleeping spectacle knowing that he sure wasn't going to have his way with her today.

"Why was mine removed?" Trunks continued his interrogation, following in his father's wake as Vegeta crossed the room to Akane.

"Your mother wanted it so." Vegeta spoke softly not to wake Akane.

He lifted his little mate out of the chair and carried her into the bed chamber, Trunks still at his heels hounding him with "But why?" questions to every answer he gave him until he ordered him to stuff it.

Instead the young demi watched, impatiently bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet while Vegeta pulled the covers up over his sleeping mate. The boy froze suddenly and pointed a condemning finger to the rise of the belly under the covers.

"She's stronger than I am now?" Trunks asked aghast.

Vegeta fended off the grin that wanted to come to his face. His son was becoming more like him every day. He left the bed chamber asking passingly: "Does it matter?"

Trunks trotted after him hollering in utter disgust: "I can't have a little sister that is stronger than I am!"

Vegeta was very pleased by that answer. "Then you'll have to train harder, boy."

Trunks crossed his arms, again in perfect comparison to his father. "I train every day like you tell me to."

"Have you trained today yet?" Vegeta asked with mock sternness.

"No." Trunks admitted guiltily.

"Let's go then." Vegeta put his hand in Trunks' neck and ushered him out onto the long hallways of the Marauder in search of a vacant training chamber where he could teach his son.