All rights belong to Akira Toriyama, Toyotarou and Toei Animation
This is based on the manga cannon, so there may be some discrepancies with the anime.
The upcoming conversation had distracted Bulma from her work all day. Not even the new schematics for her latest invention, something which would surely revolutionise the automobile industry, had been enough to keep her mind on the present. It wasn't as if she was going to do anything particularly out of the ordinary. Nothing that ought to have occupied her mind so much. She was just going to invite her husband to dinner, and withstand his inevitable refusal. That was all. But her mind kept drifting back to Trunks, his tears, her conversation with Vegeta. She had been so concerned with how the changes had affected her relationship, emptied her bed, that she hadn't spared enough thought for her poor son.
Trunks was old enough to understand, but he just didn't. Vegeta had been over the worst of his tendencies by the time Trunks was old enough to remember. Sure, he had been a distant parent, but at least he had been one.
Even as she had planned on confronting Vegeta for his behaviour, she had tried to reason with Trunks, to explain to him about the father from before that he had either never known or could not remember. Trunks had a very forgiving nature, much like his mother, but it seemed the words his father had unleashed in an unexpected fury would be there to stay in his mind for some time.
This Vegeta was very easily angered, and Trunks had confessed to his mother in a small voice that he was frightened of him. Of the father he had once admired with starry-eyed wonder. Bulma's heart couldn't stop breaking at every turn, even though she needed to be strong. Her whole family was relying on her, with another on the way.
How could she go through another pregnancy, another birth while her man remained distant, in his own world? She threw her screwdriver in a fit of temper she immediately regretted, but couldn't be bothered rising to retrieve it. She would call it a day, she decided. It was almost time for dinner, anyway. Shifting her attention away from the physical tools to her computer, Bulma brought up the gravity room's visuals and communication software, spending a few moments just watching her husband.
It reminded her instantly of the days before the androids came. Except that this time Vegeta was clad in his training suit, concealing any bandages or other injuries he may have had. Sweat poured from his forehead, darkening his clothing down to his gloves and boots, which although recently cleaned already showed marks of wear. He moved like one possessed, limbs trembling as he pushed himself over and over again. He was doing push-ups in a handstand position, one of his exercises that she had often admired, but now felt ill just watching. Not understanding the numerical system he was using, she had no idea what count he was up to, but it was certainly too many for her liking. Sure enough, just as she brought up the microphone to call out to him, one arm gave an almighty shudder, before buckling, sending him sprawling onto the floor with a curse.
"Vegeta!"
"Not now, woman!" he bit back, shuddering, struggling and failing to rise.
"Vegeta, you've had enough! You need a break!" it had never worked in the past and it certainly wouldn't now but she had to try anyway, for the sake of her itching conscience.
"I do not! A saiyan grows immensely stronger when pushed to his limits." That was an old one, and while technically true, was no comfort to a wife.
She understood him pushing herself, she was used to it, had grown desensitised to a lot of minor injuries and ailments. But this driven madness was too much.
"Vegeta, please!" she begged as he rose to his knees, looking straight at her with those determined eyes, a twisted parody of where they had been some fifteen years before.
"No! I recall you promising me never to obstruct my training—"
"This is different!" she protested, "I can't sit back and watch you destroy yourself, Vegeta, I can't!"
"Then don't," he bit out, knees jittering as he finally managed to stand.
"Why, Vegeta?" she asked softly, voice carrying over the speakers, "Why are so desperate to get stronger?"
"I think the better question is why do you want to stop me?" her husband growled, "Surely it shames you, grates at your nerves to know that I am but a shadow of my former self. At my current level of strength, I am leagues behind the fool you call a friend. Any other mate would have turned their back in humiliation."
"Vegeta, you know I don't think of it like that. I value your strength, but only because it means so much to you. That's not what matters to me."
"It is the only thing that matters!" he shouted, aura blazing around him as he clenched his fist towards the camera, eyes wild with unbridled fury.
"Vegeta…" she breathed softly, cursing the ancient civilisation for instilling such terrible notions in her husband's mind. It seemed that the Darkness had awakened not only his anger and hatred, for himself and others, but also the old saiyan customs which had simmered under the surface for so long, only occasionally rearing their ugly head. He had started to neglect them, even contradict them at times as he grew more human over the years.
"It's not the only thing that matters," she said patiently, calling upon that understanding she had begged of Trunks that morning, "Other things are important too. Family is important. You used to realise that."
"Pah! Family, what a waste of time," he dismissed, staggering over to the controls. He wasn't seriously considering turning them up, was he? But she couldn't see him decreasing them; not with her present.
"Trunks misses you," she tried again.
"I don't care," was his off-hand reply as, just as she had expected, the gravity shot up by 10Gs.
"Vegeta, stop this!" she pleaded as his head kissed the control panel, but he staunchly refused to give any ground, raising himself with clearly painful effort to meet her gaze.
"No," he replied levelly.
Bulma could feel tears prickling at the back of her eyes, lips trembling as she tried to form words. She couldn't look away from his spasming arms, struggling to keep him upright against the control panel. His shoulders were quaking with heaving breaths but he would not give in, would not rest. Not until he had achieved his goal of besting Goku, that much she knew.
And this would be even worse than the last time, because Goku was so very much stronger than him, because Vegeta now knew how to push himself further and harder, knew how high he could reach, was determined not to concede that he would be permanently set back. Worse because this time she wasn't a bystander with an inappropriate crush.
She was his wife, and she was about to watch her Vegeta torture himself all over again.
"At least, would you come in for dinner?"
She knew that would not stop him training. It had taken years for Vegeta to call it a day after dinner time, and spend the rest of his hours before bed with his family. She remembered keenly her surprise at finding him, one night, relaxing on one of the couches in the living room, reading of all things while Trunks played on a now outdated console.
Just enjoying the presence of his family, not interacting with them, not playing with them, not yet. But it had lifted her heart all the same.
"No."
Of course that was his reply.
Bulma couldn't watch any more, and shut down her computer a moment later. She wasn't about to force his training regime – she could hack into the system and change the settings but what good would that do? It would only drive Vegeta away to a new training place or regime that she could not monitor and had no emergency control over.
He was only living in proximity to them because of the gravity simulator, and she wasn't about to risk him leaving for good. Besides, if she interfered, he might even try at the electronics himself, and could be hurt.
But there had to be something she could do.
Vegeta would not be eating that night.
Not because he wasn't hungry – he was in fact famished. It felt as if his intestines had become a writhing snake.
No, he would not be eating because he could not move.
Vegeta's muscles had handed in their resignation with contempt, and refused to do anything but transmit agony up to his befuddled brain. He was fortunate indeed that he had shut down the gravity operations before he had suddenly found himself prostrate on the warm tiles. Yellowish lights like miniature suns shone down on him, bathing him and making him wonder how late it was. After Bulma had called, he had pressed on for an undeterminable amount of time which had seemed like forever to his overtaxed body but may have been only a few minutes.
He was tired, no, beyond exhausted, his body fatigued to the point of giving out while he was still conscious. He was starving, gut twisting beneath him as his fingers twitched but his body still refused movement.
But mostly he was furious.
Furious, shaking with rage (or perhaps that was just his exhaustion), because he had, in a fit of obvious stupidity, surrendered years' worth of hard-earned gains. All for the sake of a family! That was precisely why saiyans disapproved of such notions. In a matter of minutes, perhaps an hour, he had lost, willingly given up, the strength he had worked so tirelessly to achieve.
Now Kakarot was far ahead of him, and Vegeta felt he would never reach him. Never be the best, never attain his birthright or prove to a father that no longer existed that he had made the right decision to spare his life.
Vegeta thought he would be left in this quagmire of weakness, striving always to re-emerge but never again having any relevance. Neglected like all of those human friends Kakarot had surpassed over the years.
How pathetic. And even worse were the tears of frustration which threatened to spill over as anger warred with misery in his being. His body felt as if liquid lead filled his veins, weighing him down and forcing him to listen to the incessant accusations of his own mind.
I've always been stronger than you!
Weak! Weak!
You're weak, Vegeta!
Most sounded like Kakarot, but the last one had Bulma's voice. She ought to have been ashamed to be wed to such a useless male. Bulma had all the brains and riches she could ever desire, all she needed was some brawn to complete her set.
But Vegeta did not care enough about Bulma to hide himself away in shame, no, he hid himself away to stop her pestering.
That didn't mean he didn't feel mortified, though.
Too weak, or too unstable to summon god ki, reduced to a spectre of a mere mortal, humbled beneath the weight of his own failures. Vegeta was certainly a disgrace, made even more so when a lone tear caressed his cheek, dripping to the floor with a soft 'plip'.
Pathetic.
The next fortnight was a nightmare for Bulma. Every day, without fail, she invited her husband to at least one meal, and every day, without fail, he refused. It was a good thing that saiyans only needed meat to fulfil their nutritional needs, otherwise she would be worried about his intake. She was worried about something else, though. Vegeta was starting up the gravity room before she woke up every morning, its red glow captured on her security cameras when she had started looking. He wasn't shutting it down until close to midnight, and she knew he was training in it for that entire time. The tell-tale red of the gravity creation function constantly shone through the windows, telling Bulma all she needed to know about her husband's schedule.
He looked like a walking ruin whenever she tried to communicate with him, but nothing would induce him to quit, if anything, her pleading only encouraged him. His limbs trembled, his breath heaved, even to the point where she could hear it over the speakers. Sweat drenched him as if he had taken a much-needed swim. Not that Vegeta had ever availed himself of their luxurious pool without the lengthy wheedling of his son and wife.
She missed those days. Taking some time out of their routines for pointless fun.
Not something this Vegeta would engage with anytime soon.
No, this Vegeta was obsessed, plainly insane. He was insatiable, addicted to power and strength and improving as if nothing else mattered. Not even his life. And his anger, she could feel it bubbling beneath the surface of his features, exploding out on their son whenever he plucked up the courage to confront him. Discharging at her when she went too far.
Her thoughts turned to the photo in her living room, shining beneath a brand new photo frame. Vegeta had not unleashed his power like that in years.
But Bulma couldn't find her own answering rage, because every so often Vegeta's torn and open face would appear before her mind's eye, gutted by betrayal, hurt, then finally replaced with a look of fierce determination.
I will fix this, Bulma, I promise you. I will save you.
Words meant not for the woman who had tried to murder him, but for the wife he had loved, the wife he was willing to sacrifice his own self for.
It was a guilt-ridden Bulma who, absent-mindedly unscrewing a piece of machinery on the lab floor, was jerked into action by a violent cacophony from her computer. She took a moment to recognise the sound, a moment she understood to be very precious as she placed the noise.
It was the alarm she had chosen, just a fortnight ago, for the new warning system she had designed for the gravity room. It would detect lack of movement while the gravity system was operational.
Dropping her tools and fumbling with her phone, Bulma was before her computer in one heart-stopping moment, switching to the gravity room's cameras and communication application.
"Vegeta!" she cried, spotting the saiyan face-down on the floor. Just as the system had warned, he was completely still, not responding to her yelling. She hastily shut down the gravity, breathing a small sigh of relief as the lights flicked from blood red to warm, reassuring yellow.
"Damn it!" the phone nearly slipped from her fingers as she hastily dialled in the number for her on-call medical team, tripping over her feet on the way to the door.
"Hold on, Vegeta," she begged as she waited for the other end to pick up, "Come on…"
The stairs to the next floor had never felt so long, but the elevator was out of the question. Bulma's legs burned at the exertion and for a moment she envied her husband's legendary endurance.
"Hello? Capsule Corp. Medical Team, how may I help you?"
"Bulma here," she panted, racing down the hallway, hoping Trunks was still upstairs completing his homework, "It's Vegeta. He's collapsed in the gravity room."
"All right, we'll be there in a jiffy."
That woman was far too positive, Bulma thought, bursting out the back door onto the lawn. The cool, evening air whipped at her lab coat as grass sprawled out in front of her, making the trek look far longer than normal.
"Nearly there," she muttered to herself as she continued her rush, arms tucked into her sides as she panted because fitness what not her side of the marriage partnership.
Disabling the internal lock easily, Bulma broke in, flinging the door open and hastening inside.
She had eyes only for the supine figure, lying so very still on the tiles. Motionless, like all the nightmares she had weathered, in her husband's arms, in the aftermath of their encounter with Buu.
"Vegeta!" she cried out as she drew near, dropping down beside him. Grunting heavily, she managed to roll him onto his side, arranging his powerful limbs in the recovery position.
"Please don't be dead," she begged as she licked her finger, applying the saliva to her powdered cheek. Leaning over his mouth, she placed one trembling hand on his stomach, and tried to block out other distractions.
A gust of hot wind hit her face as his stomach spasmed, nearly causing her to cry with relief.
"You had me worried there, you big idiot!" she laughed, playfully smacking his forehead. A forehead with one, large and terrifying bruise the colour of Bulma's hair. His face and neck were pocked with bruises ranging from ocean blue to urine yellow. A wet cough brought her attention back to his face, where her eyes fixed on the vision of blood trickling from his lips. That was when she realised the puddles around her, which she had assumed were sweat in her haste, were red.
Red like the blood making its way from Vegeta's mouth to the floor, a cruel satire of drool.
Examining his form, Bulma could make out scorch marks littering his body suit, with some parts burnt through, revealing blistering flesh.
"Oh Vegeta," she moaned, "What have you been doing to yourself?"
She sat by his side for some minutes, stroking his hand, not daring to move him more in it would aggravate his injuries. Gazing lovingly down at her fallen hero, her mind drifted to a similar incident so many years ago, when Vegeta's ambition to improve had culminated in an explosion which rendered him unconscious for days. She remembered how she had waited by his bedside, watching over him as inappropriate feelings warred inside her, making her question her relationship with Yamcha. Those early days when an unexpected desire had begun to burn inside her, drawing her towards the aloof saiyan like a moth to a flame.
So much had happened since that time, when she had finally admitted to herself that yes, she was attracted to Vegeta. Good times, bad times. All precious events which had shaped the Vegeta she loved. The Vegeta she had lost.
Now history was repeating itself, swaddling Bulma in helplessness as she was shunted into the position of bystander again, watching her husband destroy himself.