Author's Note: Guys, I received a sign from the universe. After three years (that encompassed a new job, followed by essential working in a global pandemic, followed by a second baby), I was taking a cross country drive for family vacation when I spotted a license plate that read 'Bulma'. So here I am, with the epilogue I always meant to tack onto this fic.

Honestly, it never really left my mind during all that time. This started mainly as a way to make my husband laugh, and I was so floored to find so many other people laughing along too. I'm so grateful for your words and your support, and I hope you find this little addition in the same spirit as the piece I started so long ago.


Epilogue

1 month later.

"You said it was impossible."

"Improbable. I said improbable, not impossible."

"Regardless, you were wrong." He stood as far as possible from her without physically being in another room. One knee was bent to rest a booted sole against the wall, arms crossed, giving him the appearance of an archetype of indifference. To be perfectly fair, he looked equally aloof any other time they met outside of her bedroom, and since their week-long contract had dissolved, they met with an unprecedented frequency.

Normally, it made her laugh. Today, it sucker punched her in her already queasy gut.

Sliding down the opposite wall to sit on the floor, she recalled the little squeal of delight her mother let out when she revealed the unexpected news. How she swept Bulma into a perfumed squeeze and rained down little kisses as she chattered aimlessly. "A grandchild! At last! And just when I had almost given up hope—oh, I do hope it's a little girl. Bows! And dresses, and those itsy bitsy shoes! But a boy—he would be just as handsome as his father, of course…"

She remembered the little concerned frown that wrinkled her father's brow as he took her hand and asked her simply how she felt.

She looked up at Vegeta hopelessly, wearing all of this on her face like a bruise.

There was nothing in the hard line of his mouth or the detached tilt of his chin, but the carefully careless expression in eyes said clearly, So what?Get up, go on. Fight. You think this is bad? Try carrying out planetary destruction at the behest of the creature who murdered your father and obliterated your entire race. Or dying in the dirt while some brainless bumpkin hijacks your revenge and usurps your birthright. This will not kill you.

It was the nicest thing anyone had not said to her all day.

"Thanks for the pep talk, Vegeta. You're the best."

One corner of his mouth curled up lazily.

"Anytime."

2 months.

So this is the miracle of pregnancy, she realized, tears streaming down her cheeks and out of her nose as she gagged on the taste of bile at the back of her tongue. The miracle was that somehow she was still vomiting, even when it was impossible that there was anything left in her stomach.

She collapsed slowly until her cheek rested against the cool tile of the floor, one outstretched arm maintaining a handhold on the base of the toilet. She stared for a long time at an obscured corner of the bathroom that likely hadn't been scrubbed in ages until the waves of nausea receded to a manageable level. In the space they left behind, she discovered a dull ache in her ribs from the violence of her retching. She rolled to find a more comfortable position, and her eyes fell on the silent figure in the doorway.

"I'm sorry," she said with as much asperity as she could muster in her anemic state. "Was I disturbing you?"

"Yes," Vegeta answered.

"There are other bedrooms, you know."

"I know."

She had no more energy for arguing with a brick wall, so she turned her head and closed her eyes. When she woke, she was cold, but not the type of cold she had expected. Instead of the leeching chill of the bathroom floor, there was the simple cold of bare sheets. Someone had tossed her haphazardly on the bed, not even bothering to cover her with a blanket, and there wasn't the faintest lingering trace of his body heat, as he had obviously taken her hint and sought out alternative accommodations for the night.

She shimmied awkwardly, trying to flip the comforter up with a foot, and in the process she caught sight of the glass of water she had left earlier sitting on the bedside table. She stopped to glare at it, swallowing around the bitter taste lingering in her mouth, and imagined throwing it in his smug, not-helpful face.

But later, she decided, sinking back into a pillow. Much later.

3 months.

"Vegeta!" Bulma tripped lightly into the kitchen. She slung her purse down on the table and immediately began digging through the contents. "I'm so glad I found you. I have something I wanted to show you."

Vegeta, caught with a piece of chicken in hand and his back to the counter, was left without any obvious avenue for retreat. It was a tactical victory on her part, and he was forced to acknowledge it.

She removed a white envelope with a triumphant flourish, then slipped a glossy piece of paper out and offered it to him. He took it grudgingly and examined the grainy black-and-white image in confusion.

"It's a sonogram. Of the baby," she added when she received no response. She leaned in to point instructively. "See, all the parts are there. This is the head. And the feet are here. No tail, though." Suddenly, her fingers dug urgently into his forearm as she peered closer at the image. "At least, I don't think there's a tail. They would have said something about that, right?"

She glanced up at him anxiously, caught sight of his expression, and quickly tried to backpedal. "Not that there's anything wrong with a tail, of course, but have you ever thought about what it would be like to have one inside you?"

"Never," he answered with blunt honesty and attempted to hand the picture back to her.

She released him as she waved it away. "I have plenty of copies. You can have that one."

"And what do I do with it?"

"I don't care." She shrugged indifferently, but there was an irritated toss of her head as she turned to stuff the envelope back into her purse. "Keep it, throw it away, whatever. It makes no difference to me."

He nodded his understanding and curled the small photo in the palm of his hand until she made her exit. Then he deliberately tucked it into the bottom of the trash can.

4 months.

Perhaps he was losing his edge, but he had been wholly unprepared for a full-scale invasion.

She sat on the floor of his room, several of his empty blue suits strewn about her like fallen soldiers. She was wielding a pair of scissors, and there was a dangerous glint in her eyes. In retrospect, it was probably the nascent tears, but he was too startled in the moment to register them.

"What have you done?" he demanded.

"It's my design, and my intellectual property." A quick, sure cut sheared a length of fabric away. "So I decided to repurpose a few of your suits."

"For what purpose, exactly?"

She was making several obscure measurements against her hand as examined her next victim, but she glanced up at him at that. Her lip began to quiver almost imperceptibly. Her voice was steady but barely more than a whisper. "None of my pants fit."

He took a slow breath. Whatever he said next was going to determine the likelihood of her attempting to shred his current outfit with him still inside. Then, he informed her as neutrally as he could manage, "I expect replacements within the week."

She did not stab him, but she did begin sobbing in an alarming fashion.

Unused to hysterical females occupying his living quarters, he hesitated. "I—" he began, but it felt like a fist clamped around his throat. Did he just squeak? Surely not.

A noise came from her which he interpreted as a rather damp "Yes?"

"Nothing." That at least sounded definitive, so he drove it home by stepping back and closing the door between them. Let her pursue her new enthusiasm for sewing in solitude. It was not like he was running away.

No, he was absolutely not running away.

5 months.

It was the first and only time in her life she had bested a Saiyan, but the price was too dear. She sank back into the couch with a feeble whimper. That was all she could manage since her recent meal and her growing child were encroaching on the territory normally occupied by her lungs, and suddenly she was gasping for air.

Vegeta, who had been surveying the extensive collection of empty takeout containers crammed on the coffee table with something approaching grudging admiration, frowned when she panted woefully, "I—can't—breathe."

"I did tell you not to finish the tempura."

She slid her hips down, angling her body in the hope that gravity might work on the heavy contents of her stomach and offer her some relief. "I believe what you said was that I couldn't finish it," she puffed testily. "But I did. So there."

"And how does your victory taste?"

"Empty...and a bit like peanuts."

His point made, he nudged a styrofoam container aside so that he could prop his feet up. Beside him, she half-sat up with a frantic exclamation.

"Oh! You know what would get rid of that taste?"

"No," he said.

"Donuts." She slanted a hopeful and innocently pleading glance in his direction.

"No," he said.

She batted her eyelashes at him in a particularly dewy fashion, unperturbed, because she knew eventually, with enough pressure, he would say yes. Or, what he would actually say was, "Just shut up." But it was essentially the same thing.

6 months.

He woke on a planet he had meant to destroy, in the bed of a woman who should have been dead at his hands, alone there for the first time. The weight of all his failures crouched on his chest with a gravity of its own. The sheer force of inadequacy held him down, grinding his bones, until he felt ready to sink into the earth.

Earth. The place where all the last Saiyans went to die. Radditz, Nappa…and it seemed perhaps their prince was destined to join them.

Death had not forgotten their brief acquaintance, hovering closer than his next heartbeat, and if their casual flirtation blossomed into something serious during one of his training sessions—what then?

He had sacrificed his pride a hundred times for the best tools this mudball had to offer, and instead he found he had merely traded his legacy for a few moments of, of…companionship. He was no better than Kakarot, saddled with some female and her brat. And oh, he was even lower than that because the exalted power that was his by right had been denied him over and over again.

There could be no further excuses, no more distractions. Earth was a planet of dirt and disaster, and it would bury him before he was even properly dead if he did not find the strength to leave this very instant.

The mattress creaked.

The baby wasn't even born yet, and already her life was changing. For one thing, she was hiding in a closet at a party. Hiding in a closet at her own party.

Though, to be fair, she had been very clear with her mom that she positively did not want a baby shower. So when several of the women from Capsule Corp had ambushed her this morning with a diaper cake, she had taken one panicked look at the balloons and streamers before excusing herself for a very plausible bathroom break.

The prospect of opening one pastel-colored gift bag covered in cartoonish giraffes and ducklings was enough to freeze her blood. She could not imagine cooing over the delicate rattle or the hand-crocheted blanket or something else completely normal and completely useless. How did you even begin to build a baby registry for a not-quite-human bundle of joy? What developmental toys would withstand the onslaught of a half-Saiyan infant? When could she expect it to start flying around the place? How did you possibly child-proof the nursery, or gate the stairs? How much formula should she stock up on, or did they even drink breast milk? Maybe they just came bursting into the world with a full set of teeth.

She shuddered. Teeth.

She was busy staring into the jaws of her inevitable doom when the door cracked open. A single dark eye and cocked brow regarded her above half a scowl.

"Your mother is searching for you."

She returned Vegeta's appraising stare. "Tell me quickly: how much will your silence cost?"

"It is no concern of mine. I am not here at her bidding. I am—"

"Oh, good!" She surged forward and latched onto his wrist with all the tenacity of remora attaching to the fin of a shark, and with all the same hope of steering the leviathan. "Then hurry, get in here before you give me away."

"No, I need—"

"Yes, yes," she dismissed him impatiently as she shook the appendage in her grip. "Whatever you broke, I'll fix it. Just be quiet and get in the closet."

"But—I—what if someone were to see us?" He hissed the last part, his face flushing ever so slightly.

That, at last, caught her attention, and she dropped the hand clutching him to her hip.

Her earlier agonies were forgotten at the prospect of some mischief at Vegeta's expense. She regarded him with wide blue eyes, a sly tilt to her lips. "Considering I am a good girl with a spotless reputation, I would probably scream."

She watched his shoulders contract while his expression fought to remain impassive. After a moment, he stepped forward, drastically reducing the square footage of her makeshift sanctuary. The door snicked shut behind him. "I think—" His voice was darker than the space around them. His fingers were in her hair, tugging a little painfully at her scalp. "I think I would like that."

With a savage grin, she reached up to drag his lips to hers. There were a few disadvantages to their similarities in height, which had only become more apparent as her child had grown. It did not take long to become discontent with his mouth alone, but finding ways to bridge the distance between them was increasingly difficult. She growled in frustration and writhed ineffectually against him as she strove to angle their bodies together. Maddeningly, she only succeeded in tripping over some unseen object and ramming her chin straight down into his collarbone.

He laughed as he caught her and pinned her hands behind her, driving her back until she felt the sharp edge of a shelf digging into her lower back. It was not a nice sound, but it shivered through her delightfully. She stretched up and sank her teeth into his shoulder, and he made a different sound. She liked that too, so she did it again. The rest blurred into a series of sharp pleasures and lovely tortures as she lost track of who had the upper hand. Until she was simply lost.

7 months.

You think you know a guy.

After he'd threatened to kill her on Namek, she'd thought she had a pretty solid idea of the worst thing Vegeta could do to her. Never to be underestimated, though, the bastard had gone and left her without a word to flit around space while she was seven months into gestating his offspring. So maybe her judgment in men still needed some work after all.

Not that it mattered. Not that it should matter. She had informed him in a rather unsubtle manner more than once that she would be better off without him. She had told him at the start that he could leave and it wouldn't break her. But her hormones were threatening to make a liar of her tonight.

It had all started with the socks, of course.

She flopped ineffectually in the nest of pillows she had constructed around herself. She flexed her aching feet and levered herself awkwardly to rub at a swollen calf. It was a simple moment of weakness, but she could not seem to stop fantasizing about his flat abs…the bulging biceps…the ease with which he would be able to pull those absurdly tight compression socks up to her knees. She bit her lip as she observed the little divets her fingers left in the puffy flesh around her ankle. There was, if she focused hard enough, a small voice drowning out those images with an unceasing reminder that all those big, capable muscles were merely concealing a selfish, callous, and—oh, yeah, murderous—swine. Any minute now, she would be recalled to her senses and realize that anyone who had seen their own toes in the past few weeks would do in a pinch.

She should call Goku. Not about the socks. But he might be interested to know they were potentially down one freakishly strong alien in the looming battle against the androids. She should have called him yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that…Still, she couldn't seem to bring herself to pick up the phone.

In all honesty, Goku was possibly the last person she wanted to talk to, even more than Vegeta. Because—because it had always been about Goku. The reason Vegeta had been here in the first place. The reason he had left. The only reason that he might conceivably come back. The Saiyan prince would eternally loathe his rival more than he might sorta, kinda like her. The only thing she could aspire to be was an awkward third wheel, and it stung a girl's pride to be so totally eclipsed by her childhood pal.

This feeling wasn't forever, either, she reminded herself on a sharp inhale. She wouldn't always be wallowing around in this bed, outclassed by a pair of polyester stockings and with a tiny parasite rewiring her cerebral pathways. Soon she would be perfectly balancing motherhood and the pinnacle of her career with the kind of effortless grace that would make people weep. She was and always had been a self-contained masterpiece, and there was nothing a jumped-up monkey could do to diminish that.

After a few experimental lurches, she managed to shift enough to reach into the drawer of her bedside table. She fished through the eclectic collection contained there until her fingers closed around the comm device she was seeking. She had never found the paired receiver she had gifted to Vegeta. It could have been destroyed or dumped or forgotten in a drawer somewhere, but there was some small probability that it had been haphazardly tossed in a bag that had later been snatched up for an interstellar journey. Even if that were the case—unlikely—it had never been meant for sending signals any farther than across the compound. The likelihood of her words reaching her intended target in the depths of space was effectively zero, but she felt a strong compulsion to broadcast a message into the cosmos regardless. She hit the transmit button.

"I don't need you, you jerk."

In some forsaken corner of the universe, under a dark sky, in the absolute silence of an uninhabited world, Vegeta jolted awake. He was propped against the open hatch to his ship, and the sudden wrench caused him to slam his head into the sharp edge of the door. His lips pulled into a grimace as he turned his eyes to scan his shadowy surroundings. When crimson death did not immediately descend, he gave a little grunt and shook his head dismissively.

"I must be imagining things," he said out loud, because talking to himself was the next logical step after hearing voices. Then, he closed his eyes. But he did not sleep.

8 months.

Her son came screaming into the world six weeks early. The shout rang out, hanging sharply in the air, even as the room whirled into a controlled chaos. People in blue scrubs circulated around her, moving with purpose and speaking with a quiet, professional urgency. There was the distant drip, drip of some fluid hitting the floor. She screwed her eyes shut, a subtle premonition warning her that she did not want to see what would happen next.

Then the baby cried out again, and she couldn't help but look. His eyes were hazy blue, unfocused on the world, but he was very suddenly all she could see. There was a soft buzzing at the base of her skull, and it ate away at the edges of her vision. Still, she clung to that image of his face, scrunched and mottled gray and red, both perfect and unlovely, until the mistiness in her brain muffled everything in a quiet haze.

It was a long time and a couple units of blood before she saw her son again, and even longer before they had a private moment between the two of them. He had been weighed and measured, poked and tested, and he had been pronounced uncannily healthy despite his premature birth. She wished the same could be said about her.

With a distinct effort, she lifted a heavy arm to punch the control button on the bed and raise herself for a better view. A little shuffling slide brought her close enough to reach the bassinet. Reverently, she rolled it a few inches closer. And then, because she couldn't help herself, she tenderly placed three finger pads against the downy lavender fuzz at the crown of his sleeping head.

He was barely born, but she was already awed by this mighty fighter who had overcome the obstacles set before him. And yet, Bulma could hope for better for him. Whatever was in her power, she would make his path as smooth and shining and brilliant as befit the future president of Capsule Corp. That was years and years away, of course—after her own lengthy tenure in that position—but already she could glimpse the mantle of greatness hanging on this extraordinary singularity she had ushered into existence. A child born of blood and tears and starlight. The best thing she had ever made.

Trunks.

There was a storm without, there was a storm within. It was an unforeseen equilibrium, and the pull between the two seemed to be the only thing holding the fibers of his being together even as he hurtled past the limits of his power. The air was electric, his mind was fire, and his strength was like water slipping through his fingers—but still he flung himself from meteor to meteor in a furious bid for survival for himself and his ship. He almost smiled, feeling a cold joy crystallize in his chest. Alone again, in an uncaring world, struggling to turn insurmountable odds in his favor; perhaps this was what he had been missing on Earth.

And then he looked up. It was always a mistake to look up.

There was no time to breathe, no time to plan, only time to leap up to meet the titanic meteor pressing down on him, draining every last molecule into a desperate, blazing ki blast.

The meteor gave first, just barely. It buckled and cracked, and the rebound of his own doomed explosion sent him plunging toward the ground. Around him the rumble rained down in a hellish confusion, occasionally slamming into the broken shell of his body—and probably, he realized with a distant pang of regret, into the craft that represented his only escape from this worthless rock. He had managed to take one very large problem and created a hundred, a thousand small disasters. Typical.

It was not, all things considered, a long fall, but he took the scenic route, crashing through layer after layer of the craggy landscape. It was going to be his terminal trip after all, so it only made sense to make it last. He had already sealed his fate, one way or another, and this would be his only remaining opportunity to reflect on the futility of his existence. Frieza, Kakarot, he could feel them fading away from him. What difference was there between a triumph and a defeat, what did it matter who he might be capable of annihilating, if the universe itself demanded his death? His eyes were full of stars flickering above him in the bitter expanse of space, and every single one of their countless company wanted him gone.

When the final impact came, his release was not instantaneous. He had not earned that dignity. Instead, he peeled jagged bones and shredded flesh out of the dirt, some fragment at his core striving automatically to go on in the face of utter hopelessness. His vision was black. Black and pink.

Pink.

Fate was pink, a tiny pink ball that had never rolled the way he wanted no matter how he swung. It was time to let it go. Let it go. Let it go.

And at the very bottom, in the dust and ruin, he was born again in blood and tears and a light like the heart of a star.

9 months.

The baby monitor crackled to life with the hungry howling of her son. Roused from a few messy fragments of sleep, Bulma gave a little groan and groped for the edge of the blankets. Her hand collided with a solid wall of flesh. She flexed her fingers experimentally against a pectoral, suddenly afraid to open her eyes and see Vegeta. Because obviously it was Vegeta. Only a prince would consider it acceptable to crash her spaceship on the lawn and slip upstairs to avail himself of all the comforts Earth had once offered him.

With a weary exhale, she cracked open her heavy lids to examine the inconvenient truth in the weak glow of the moon creeping through her window. Sleep had been foremost among his desires, apparently, after all those light years travelled, and he did not stir under the weight of her scrutiny. Even in this forgiving light, even in the carelessness of repose, he did not look softer or younger or free of care. Conversely, the shadows seemed to gather close to emphasize the sharpness of his features, the cruel curve of his lips. There was a puckered, angry-looking slash across his chest that would make an admirable scar someday.

She assimilated all this as she felt the waiting waves of emotion threatening to crash over her. She let the gentler ones in first. Relief, like a whole-body sigh. Then she marched straight into the spikier ones, the kind that made her want to reach for the nearest object to knock him over his unsuspecting head.

Trunks wailed again, more insistent this time. Bulma sat up, her violent inclinations almost forgotten. Vegeta, like every father in the history of time, appeared to have the innate ability to doze unperturbed through these midnight serenades. She gave him a final glare as she pushed herself out of bed and began her shamble down the hallway.

Her body was tired and sore and leaking in a distressing fashion. But her mind was churning in a way that it had not in weeks. Let Vegeta sleep. Tomorrow they would have time enough. Time to introduce him to his son. Time for him to grasp the true excellence of this small person she had created. And then she would take her time relishing tossing Vegeta out of her house for good.

A smile crept over her face as she soundlessly unlatched the nursery door. Tomorrow was going to be a good day.