Chapter Seven

Bulma opened her eyes and saw white. "Am I dead?" she said.

"Close, but no, honey, you ain't dead," a voice said from out of nowhere.

Bulma jumped up from her lying position, causing her head to swim. She placed a shaky hand on her head and looked around. Nothing but white . . . and a single woman. She scrunched together her eyes in confusion. She's not dead? Well, this sure wasn't earth.

"You look confused," the woman said.

Bulma walked over to her, studying her look. She was a compact woman, a fighter it looked like. She had short black hair—cut, Bulma supposed, so the hair wouldn't get in her way—and she wore a loose pair of pants with a tight shirt, both light blue, a rather stark contrast from her black eyes. She looked like a clash between light and darkness. The woman motioned for her to sit next to her and Bulma did as she was told.

"Where the hell are we?" Bulma asked.

"We're in a limbo—or a half-way house—between life and death. You're not really alive, but you're not dead. For some reason your body has decided it wanted to live, so it is alive but your soul—I guess that's what you'd call it—is not there," the woman stated simply, a little too simply for Bulma. "There's nothing you can do about it."

"So, I'm stuck here then," Bulma said slowly.

"Basically."

If there was something to lean back on, Bulma would have, but there was nothing but the floor and white. She wasn't dead, but she wasn't alive. She didn't know if she should be happy or sad. Shocked, she was definitely shocked; she was sure she was going to die. But here she was, stuck in limbo, and for Kami-knows how long.

She looked up and noticed that the woman was studying her now. "Oh, I'm sorry. Where are my manners? I'm Bulma Briefs," she said extending her hand toward the woman.

The woman took it gingerly and said, "Shakna."

"It's nice to meet you," Bulma said.

Shakna smirked. "No, it isn't. You weren't planning on being stuck in limbo, and neither was I."

"How long have you been here?"

"I'd say about 52 years."

"What? How could you have been here for 52 years?" Bulma asked her, surprised.

"Apparently my body doesn't want to die yet. I don't even know where my body is anymore," she said quietly.

"Oh," Bulma said, understanding that it was a hard subject for Shakna to talk about, yet wanting to know more. "How did you end up here?"

Shakna snorted. "Without honor."

Bulma looked at her confused.

Shakna sighed. "I was attacked while I slept. I'm assuming someone threw me into a regen tank but I never fully regenerated or something."

Regeneration tank? Bulma looked closely at the woman. She noticed a furry brown belt around her waist. Tail? She looked back at the woman who had turned her gaze away from her. "Are you a Saiyan?"

Shakna's gaze shot back at Bulma. Her eyes narrowed. "How do you know?"

Bulma smirked, seeing the Saiyan tendencies come out of the woman. Her tail had unfurled itself from around her waist and was flicking back and forth maliciously. "I know a few Saiyan's."

"How can you know a few Saiyan's? We're all dead."

"Hardly. My husband is a Saiyan."

Shakna seemed to recoil at the mention of a Saiyan marrying a human.

"Believe me: he really had no choice. There were no female Saiyan's he could mate with," Bulma snorted.

Shakna looked at her curiously. "You sound as if you're not happy to be married to him?"

"Should I be? He's incapable of love," Bulma said, angry.

Shakna laughed suddenly. "Love? Saiyan males don't know what love is. They are born to fight and to reproduce. They can mate with any Saiyan female they want, as long as she lets them and is not with child already. Of course, there were always exceptions, but those were few."

"Exceptions? I wish I was an exception," she said more to herself.

Shakna smiled at her languidly. "So, who is your husband?"

Bulma looked at her, knowing she would probably not believe her. "Prince Vegeta."

Shakna was on her in a second, grabbing her by her collar and holding her close so that they were face to face. They had levitated off the ground a few feet. "Take that back! Prince Vegeta would never marry a non-Saiyan woman."

Bulma smirked and crossed her arms. "He had no choice. And believe me, he didn't want to," she said, redirecting her gaze away from Shakna's penetrating gaze, still hurting.

Shakna studied her for a moment more and then dropped her. Bulma landed hard on the floor. She stood up, rubbing her backside a bit.

Shakna levitated back to the floor, her arms crossed and eyes hard. "You should feel privileged that my Prince chose you."

"Privileged? The only reason he stayed with me was because of some stupid mark he gave me on our first night." Bulma spat, pulling on her collar to display her mark.

The woman looked at her in shock, and then suddenly she knelt down. "My Queen," she said, placing her right fist over her heart.

Bulma looked at her confused. Queen? "What are you talking about?"

Shakna looked up at her, confusion now on her face. "Do you not know what that mark means?"

Bulma shook her head.

"You are my Prince's mate for life."

"No, duh," she snapped.

Shakna's face looked annoyed. She seemed to be fighting with herself about whether or not she should be putting up with this type of language.

Bulma sighed. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't talk to you like that. It's just . . . I don't know," Bulma said. She slumped to her knees and placed her face in her trembling hands.

She felt a tentative hand touch her shoulder. "My Prince never told you what that mark means?"

"All he said was that he'd be with me my whole life. He would protect me from everything and anything he could," she said, her voice weak.

"Well, you wanted to be an exception to the Saiyan rule and you most certainly are. To be marked means that he wants to be with you for the rest of his life—though in your case, the rest of yours," Shakna said to her, almost gently.

"No, he marked me in the heat of the moment, not out of anything but pure passion," she said strongly, sure that what she was said was true.

"You don't get it, do you? No Saiyan does anything without having some reason—except for maybe killing someone. My Prince must have thought about marking you for a while, though maybe not at a conscious level. He possibly may not even know why he marked you. But something told him to, and so he did. He can't take the mark away, and he risked being rejected by you, and who knows how many other things he had to sacrifice to keep his word," Shakna said.

Sacrifice? Did Vegeta have to sacrifice anything? His ambitions to kill Goku, he had to sacrifice that, which was the only ambition he had to keep him going when he marked her. By Kami, in one moment he had given up everything that made his life worthwhile for the mark . . . for her. Why couldn't she have seen it before? Why'd she have to be so stupid?

"Oh Kami!" she wailed. "I have made a terrible mistake!"

"What?" Shakna said, confused.

But Bulma couldn't say a word. She was in too much pain to say a thing. Realization hit her hard. Vegeta had given everything up for her and this was how she repaid him? By killing herself; except now, she wasn't even really dead. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have not seen?