Bulma woke to the sound of crying some time later and curiously peeked through her lashes. Small holes in the ceiling were filtering light like golden beams that cut through the shadows, it was morning already. She felt a pang of frustration and was tempted to ignore the weeping, which was not entirely uncommon to hear those days, and go back to sleep but couldn't bring herself to do it.

So Bulma blinked away the exhaustion from her lids and rolled out from under Goku's heavy arm with a weak little sigh. She roved the dim, ruined place for whoever was responsible for the tears until her eyes fell on the far corner of the room. There, near a chunk of concrete with several rusty rebars jutting from it, was a small girl with green hair. Her legs were folded against her body and her head was resting between the nook in her knees.

Bulma frowned and instantly felt guilty for having even considered turning a blind eye. Some maternal need to comfort the baby stirred inside her, and the loss of the son she never had baited her sorrow as she watched the child weep and decided she would go to her.

Beside her, Goku was snoring soundly at last getting the rest he deserved and she had no thought of waking him over a crying child. Determined to do this on her own she approached the girl and as she neared another body melted from the deep shadows beside the concrete block. It was an elderly woman laying flat on her back, appearing to be asleep with her silvery green hair tucked beneath her head like a pillow.

Bulma knew these two, the child was Arugula and her grandmother, the one laying beside her, was named Lettuce. "Aru?" She asked in a worried whisper as there were others about them still trying to sleep. "What's the matter, why are you crying?" She added.

Arugula stared up at her at the sound of her name and with a little sputter said, "It's grammy, she's dyin'."

Bulma looked down in alarm at the Lettuce who seemed for all the world to be slumbering peacefully on the thin blue blankets. "Hey, hey now." She started to assure the child, but found it hard not to get choked up and took a sharp breathe in as though mustering courage.

She kneeled by the grandmother and put two investigative fingers on her throat, swallowing the lump in her own as she did. There was a heartbeat but it was slow and heavy and her breathing was strained, Aru was right...she didn't have much longer. "Oh no." Bulma thought. "Lettuce is all Aru has left in the world, if she dies she'll have no one."

Quickly she went over everything she could do for the woman but in the end came to the conclusion that without decent hospitals nearby or proper supplies there was nothing they could accomplish but make her comfortable and wait. She was mulling over how to tell Arugula that all her fears had been correct when Goku's voice came from the greying dark.

"Hey, what's wrong? Is everything OK? Bulma?"

In a moment Bulma could feel his body heat directly behind her, he hadn't even made a noise, and she turned to face him. There must have been something haunting in her eyes because the sweet expression on his face turned serious. "What is it?" He asked again with more conviction.

Bulma gave her best smile to Arugula and then guided Goku out of earshot. "It's Lettuce Goku, she's almost gone."

"What?!" His voice carried further than it should have and instinctively she grimaced and pulled him a bit further away.

"Shhh! Keep it down Goku! Jeez!"
"Woops, sorry." He paled and for an instant she saw that goofy man again before it was masked by the dire of the situation at hand. "What's wrong with her? Are you sure there's nothing we can do to help...something with science maybe?"

Bulma inclined her head and shook it, the greying strands of her hair falling from its loose bun and tumbling around her shoulders. "She's just too old Goku, this is no life for the elderly. I'm afraid it was only a matter of time before her heart gave out from the exertion."

He, too, hung his head. "I see...how long then?"

"It's hard to say but I would give it a few hours at the most."

"Well then, we'll wait here 'til then and give her a proper burial."

Bulma's eyes were saucers, "But Goku! The Hideout! We were going to get this group there before tomorrow night, you know we can't stay in one place too long-"

"I know, but we can't expect Lettuce to be able to travel that sort of distance. Just let her die in peace around friends, not on the road in danger."

"We're all in danger if we don't go today! Someone can carry her!" She argued.

"Bulma!" There was warning in his tone and she swallowed as if there were cotton balls in her throat and nodded in understanding. Stress burned in her muscles and made her ache all over, but there was nothing else to be done.

She closed her eyes then and tried not to think about how many others were denied the luxury of dying in peace. All the innocent lives that were slaughtered in horrific manners by the tirade of the androids. How Vegeta and Chi-Chi were never given the option of a normal passing.

There it was, that name again, Chi-Chi. The idea of ever being jealous of Goku's ex-wife had never even passed her mind until last night when Goku had said her name instead of Bulma...Something seared in her stomach at the thought but she was afraid of what it would awaken and opened her eyes again.

"Oh alright, you win." She said in defeat and resigned to trusting Goku to make the right decision.

"Hey," he cupped a hand on her shoulder and there was just enough light now to see him smiling. "We'll make it there, I promise...OK?"

Bulma nodded yet again and looked over at Arugula; she was still curled up in a ball weeping and for a moment the memory of her own mourning so many years ago played over her lids like a bad movie.

Vegeta and her hadn't really been together, not in the traditional sense anyways, but they had been with one another before he made it out for space in one of their ships. There had been signs of a baby only a couple weeks later but the tides turned quickly and she'd lost it to a miscarriage only a month or so into the pregnancy. Devastated, she'd swore not to tell Vegeta that he'd been given a son only to lose him; he died never knowing he'd almost been a father and some time after she wondered if that was really such a good thing.

Her memories were convoluted after that as she'd only been told of the events following the arrival of the dreaded androids. Vegeta had been one of the first to perish, he'd charged the androids blindly and arrogantly as a newly created super saiyan but it hadn't been enough to destroy them.

It was terrible thinking of him dying but worse when she learned of the way it happened; they hadn't given him a warriors death but rather treated his death like a game. After he'd been defeated and the rest of the fighters there that day killed (except for Piccolo who'd flown off to merge with Kami) he'd charged them again in a golden blur of rage but they quickly knocked him unconscious and tossed him into the air. Back and forth they'd kicked him like a soccer ball in the sky until his muscles gave out and he could take more and it had been Krillin who shouted from the cliff face, begging them to stop.

When Krillin returned with the news, having been spared that day for reasons no one understood, Bulma had been overwhelmed by grief and locked herself in her lab for hours sitting against a wall very much like Arugula sat now.

"I'll go tell her the news." She told Goku at last, peering up at him just as a ray of light shot across his face and seemed to set his hair and eyes on fire.

Goku nodded and stepped aside, crestfallen. He knew about Trunks and the miscarriage and he understood perhaps even better than herself why she needed to be the one to tell Arugula. It was him that had to explain to her that the purple haired boy who'd come to warn them of the future, had been the son she'd never get to raise.