"There's this one...and this one...and, ooh, what about this one?"

Bulma and her mother were sitting knee deep in piles of online dating profile printouts, and Bunny was struggling to keep up with all of those that Bulma had replied "meh" to. Those were Bunny's "Yes's." Luckily, there were dishes spilling over with pastries scattered among the mess, and Bulma plucked one from the platter beside her and popped it into her mouth.

Bulma took the piece of paper from her mother lazily and pretended to glance at it. Then came to a halt. "Oooh, this one's a keeper." She thrust the paper into her mother's face as Bunny's eyes grew wide with excitement. Before her mother could get her hopes up any farther, Bulma burst into laughter. "Look at that handlebar mustache. Why would you even put that one in there?"

Bunny frowned, well-shaped brows arching. Bulma's love life was pushing the limits of Bunny's patience. "Well, excuseme. I just printed off all of the online profiles for West City for you, is all. Don't hold it against me."

"You did what?" Bulma's eyes bulged. "Well, that explains why we're sitting in a heap of paper."

"If you just picked one, we could get up and be done with it!" Bunny's mouth twisted down with despair.

Bulma couldn't help it; she smiled wide. "Oh, Mom. You poor thing." She sighed and rolled her eyes, the corner of her mouth curling in a smirk. "Give me the next one."

Bunny held out a sheet of paper, and Bulma took it, looking at it with one eyebrow arched in feigned consideration.

"Let's see." Her blue eyes ran over the text. "Male. 33. Works downtown at the Bloch Building. Hometown: East City." She cast a doubting look at mother. Her mother gestured at her to go on. "His profile picture...oh Kami, can't believe I'm doing this...I guess...he's kind of handsome?"

Bunny's face lit up, and Bulma immediately regretted her concession.

"As handsome as Vegeta?" Bunny whispered coyly.

"Oh, Mom!" Bulma yelled, throwing the paper at Bunny in a fit of impatience.

The paper was snatched out of the air between them, and both of the women looked up in surprise before their mouths dropped in horror.

Vegeta stared down at them from his nose, gripping the paper. Slowly, with painful deliberateness, Vegeta unfurled the paper and scanned the body of text. Bunny clapped her hands over her cheeks in embarrassment, and Bulma felt the floor drop out from under her.

Vegeta's face scrunched up with confusion. "What is this?"

"Nothing," Bulma and Bunny answered in small voices.

Vegeta's eyes narrowed at the women, before tossing the paper, where it floated down to rest on the pile sprawled between them.

As he turned away, the women shared a quick look, but Vegeta's gruff voice penetrated their sinking relief.

"You could do much better."

He opened the fridge, turning his back on the women to scour the fridge for food.

Bulma's fingers inched up her face to hide the scarlet blush creeping up her cheeks, but her fingers parted just in time for her to peer between them and see her mother's eyes sparkled with secret mirth.

As the Saiyan shuffled through items in the fridge, Bunny leaned forward. "Just when were you going to tell me he was staying with us?" Her mother chastised her in a whisper, looking somehow both horrified and jubilant.

"You didn't know?" Bulma's voice was muffled in her hands. "He's been back for a few weeks now."

"I haven't seen him since before Trunksie was born!" Bunny cried softly.

Bulma sneered. "Oh, you just now figured out he's been gone all this time?"

"Well, why didn't you say so! Why are we even looking at all these, then, anyway?"

"Because," she hissed, "Vegeta and I are not together."

"Well, why on earth not?" Bunny's voice rose petulantly.

"Because," Bulma growled as quietly as sanely possible, "we're not!"

"That's silly!" Her mother exclaimed, clapping her hands together wistfully. "You guys were made for each other!"

"WE WERE NOT!" Bulma shot upwards to her feet, just as Trunks emerged from underneath a pile of papers.

Three sets of eyes were on her. She fumed, growing redder with embarrassment. "Excuse me," she said through clenched teeth as she turned on her heel and made her way out the front door.

She wasn't even aware she was stomping until she'd reached the separate dome that held her father's pets and her mother's gardens. Once she realized she was making a fool of herself, marching around petulantly, she forced her legs to walk more naturally.

She threw the door open and made her way through the thick foliage, heading toward the greenhouse at the heart of the building, where a number of exotic flowers and succulents thrived under her mother's care.

Now that she was inside the thick, balmy silence of the dome, she had a moment to feel really, really stupid. Whyyyyyy did she just cut and run like that? In front of him, for Kami's sake? She had a duty to herself and Trunks to be as in control around him as humanly possible. A mother always knew what to do, right? A mother was graceful, even around loud-mouthed, betraying idiots.

Maybe her belief that she'd grown up was a bit premature.

"Stupid, stupid," she muttered, slumping into a bench beside the koi pond, her head falling into her hand.

"I believe this is yours."

She startled, and with increasing dread, pried her neck from her shoulders to look at the man she knew to be standing in front of her.

And came face to face with baby Trunks, who dangled upside down in front of her, looking absolutely delighted by it.

Her hands shot out and grabbed him, turning him around and squeezing him to her. "You can't hold a baby upside down," she admonished Vegeta.

"I just did." His face was placid, but his voice carried the edge of sarcasm.

"Well, all the blood could have gone to his head, and he could have gotten really...light headed," she finished obtusely.

It was Vegeta's turn to roll his eyes. "He's Saiyan. I could have held him there for a lightyear and he'd still be laughing."

"Ugh." She plopped Trunks on her lap firmly and gave Vegeta a dirty look. "Men."

Vegeta crossed his arms over his chest and looked sidelong at her.

After a few seconds of awkward silence, Bulma broke it clumsily. "Thank you?" She issued lamely. "For, uh, bringing me Trunks?"

Vegeta snorted and sprung upwards, floating. "Spare me." He flew leisurely above the garden and through the foliage until he was out of sight.

She watched him go with self-disparaging, wry acceptance. Bulma once again hung her head into her palms. "What is wrong with me."

A chubby fist wrapped around a tuft of her hair and pulled, hard. Tears sprung to her eyes. "Ow!" She complained, looking at Trunks aggrieved. "Now you're ganging up on me, too?"

Trunks gave her a hard look, and she sighed, turning her chin on her palm away from him morosely.

And then her eyes widened.

Her head whipped back around to Trunks. "You know what?" She asked, filled with wonder. "That's the first time your father's ever held you!" A smile stretched across Bulma's face. She began bouncing Trunks on her knee giddily. "Yay!" She squealed, and the peal of Trunks' giggles filled the greenhouse.

She'd ordered out for dinner, shared her pizza with Trunks alone in the dining room, and then swiftly plopped his butt into the bath, the water shaded red with pizza sauce. How did babies get so messy so quickly?! One calm bath before bedtime wasn't so much a misnomer as it was a bald-faced lie.

Once she'd wiped sauce from between all his rolls and lathered the fine hair on his head, she wrapped him up in his froggy towel and carried him into her sitting room on her hip, the tv the only light flickering in the dark room.

Each small limb carefully tugged through the armholes and legholes of his pajamas, and then Bulma kissed his impossibly soft cheek as her nimble fingers snapped the last button. She crossed her legs and rocked him back and forth in the dark, the sound of the movie at a hush, until he fell asleep heavily, cupped against her chest.

Carefully, OH SO carefully, she carried him to the crib in the nursery and planted him softly onto the sheets, small printed elephants silently trumpeting his arrival. She thanked Kami a dozen times that he didn't wake up—a truly once in a lifetime happening—and closed the door to his room softly.

She ambled back to her room in the dark hallway, settling bonelessly into the sitting room couch in a sprawl.

Her tv flashed in the dark, but she didn't pay it much attention. Her eyelids fluttered drowsily, her toes digging deeper into the blanket piled at her feet. The events on the tv grew distant, and as her lids fluttered heavily their last few times, a silhouette emerged from the shadows.

She felt surreally that, if she followed, the shadow would lead her into sleep. But as it approached her, pulling from the dark and substantiating in front of her, her eyelids snapped open and she bolted upright. She threw herself back instinctively, nearly climbing the back of the couch.

Only now did she recognize the figure's hair.

"Vegeta!" She cried shrilly. "What the hell do you think you're doing?! Can't you knock like a normal person?"

A light harrumph was her only answer before the figure advanced into the light, obscuring her view of the tv.

"Pitiful." He clucked his tongue. "Blades of grass under my boot cower with less drama than you."

"Oh, can it!" She chucked a throw pillow in his direction, which bounced weakly off his knees.

He was stubbornly solid in front of her.

She groused and settled back on her butt, folding her arms over her chest, possibly pouting. Yeah, being a Mom automatically made a girl real graceful.

"Let's not beat around the bushes anymore," Vegeta issued suddenly. "I am staying here on Earth. I will be training Trunks in my style of martial arts and defense. It is time we set some ground rules."

Her eyes widened. Bulma's mouth twisted suddenly into a warped smile. "Oh, you will be setting the ground rules, huh? Oh, do tell."

"Whatever happened between us is of little importance. You may continue being the boy's caretaker, but I will govern how he is trained in survivability. No one else."

Bulma felt steam erupt from her ears. She'd been too nice, letting him stay without complaint, because now he thought he had the upper hand. She should have yelled the ground rules into his bloody ears the moment he'd fallen into her guest room bed.

She shot upwards and closed the distance between them. "How dare you!" She was well beyond grace at this point. "You have some nerve abandoning him before he was born, then expecting us all to take care of you again, and then demanding that you have ANY rights over him!"

"He's an heir to the Saiyan legacy, and he will be socialized as one!"

"What, because it's convenient for you now? Because you have nothing else better to do?" She lambasted him. He flinched slightly, and she knew she'd hit a nerve.

Naturally, she kept poking. "If you think for even a second that I will allow you to come into my house and dictate to me how I should act and who will and won't be interacting with my son, you have another thing coming!"

Vegeta was really simmering now. "I am the Prince-"

"Of no one!" She shrieked. "It's time someone finally had the guts to tell you! Now that Goku is gone," Bulma snarled, "there is no one you lord over. Especially me and my son."

Aaaaaaand he looked scary angry now. "You overstep your bounds," he issued dangerously.

"Look at me! I'm overstepping my bounds!" Bulma stamped her foot out erratically.

Vegeta shook with anger.

"What happened between us can't just be erased, Vegeta! You can't just wipe it out like you wipe everything else out of your purview! I'm here, and Trunks was born of it, and now, for once, you have to deal with it." She was nearly spitting between her clenched teeth.

"I should end you for talking to me this way!"

This was the first time he'd ever threatened her. There had been many, many arguments; but he'd never raised a hand to her.

"Will you?" She opened her arms wide. "Would you?"

His gloved fingers were clenched hard at his hips, and his straight teeth glinted in the low light.

"Your only solution to everything is to kill it. Why not me, too?"

"CAN'T YOU SEE I AM TRYING SOMETHING NEW?"

His right hand fisted over his heart, his face twisting with anger and anguish. "I am trying to do the 'right' thing, and still you punish me for it!"

Bulma felt sobering embarrassment creep up on her. "You can't just make demands of me, Vegeta. You should have learned that lesson three years ago!"

"Then why do you think you can hold me, of all people, to different rules?"

You punish me for it.

Like, like she was the one who was the bully in the relationship, the one who'd broken his heart, the one who'd left him…

"Because you left me, Vegeta!" She cried. She couldn't mask her pain with flippancy any longer. "You just discarded me like I was some one night encounter, like I could have been any woman. And right after we'd learned I was carrying your child. I was wide-open and vulnerable, and of course, yon sadistic strategist saw that and hit me where it hurts." She was croaking unattractively now, tears pooling in her vision. "It was your child, Vegeta. No one else's. Yours. And I was yours. I was loyal. I may have not meant anything to you, but you somehow became my life before you left. Everything I did was for you. The bots, the maintenance to the GR, your laundry, your food. I didn't do it because I felt obligated, I didn't even do it to help save all our hides. I did it for you. Stupidly. I thought the attention you gave me meant that you appreciated me. All those nights, all those t-t-times we shared….And then you just left me. You abandoned him. I have every right to make demands of you. You have no power here anymore. You gave it up the day you left."

Oh, Kami, she didn't mean to lose control like this. But had she ever had control from the day he stepped out of that blasted pod? She felt the hot tears make their obstinate paths down her cheeks, and brushed them away impatiently. "You are so blind to anything but your own feelings," she sniffled. "I just want you to acknowledge mine, for once."

Vegeta stood in front of her, watching, but she couldn't determine his expression, warbling in her teary vision, wasn't sure she wanted to see his mouth had curled into a moue of disgust for her.

"I may not have anything else to do," he finally admitted, deep as the dark. "But I...I..."

Her mouth parted, face twisting with unknown desires, waiting.

"...I want to do it. Can you not torture me about it?"

His face was lit up in the stark monochrome of the tv, sharp features contoured on one side of his face in the half light, the other half as penetrable as the dark side of the moon.

She stared up at him and bit her lip. "Then let's set some ground rules," she finally whispered. "I will be considerate of your...space, and experiences, if you can be considerate of mine." Bulma exhaled deeply. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked at him plaintively, though it didn't make her look any less strong. "Maybe what we had...is over. But if you're going to, going to stay, then we will have to talk to one another sometimes. And...we should probably act respectfully toward one another."

His lips, the lips she once thought were beautiful, full but flat and masculine, they straightened from their downwards curl and under his long lashes she saw she had his full attention.

Was this really as much as they could say to one another without fighting? Bulma experienced a tearing pain, conflicted. They couldn't even get past hello. How had something ever had room to grow between them in the first place?

She angled her face up towards his. Waiting, always waiting, for his move.

But her unwavering optimism broke the tension. "Maybe we should learn to just be in the same room, huh?" She smiled sheepishly. "Today has been a hard lesson in that." Bulma looked upwards into his face, but he didn't give anything away. Shut up tight, per usual. She sighed through her nose.

"Vegeta...please sit down." She gestured at the couch. "Let's start this right now, shall we? Sit, and we'll practice being in the same room together. I'll even let you pick the movie."

She could see his restraint wavering, so she grabbed his wrist, and pulled.

He didn't budge, but then again, she wasn't expecting to do anything but make her point. The glove felt familiarly silky beneath her touch.

"Please," she asked stolidly.

They stared at one another in the darkness, measuring the other, measuring the wisdom of it.

Finally, Vegeta pulled away from her hand, looking askant at the tv, that earlier vulnerability gleaming.

She knew he was going to decline. Did he really feel that uncomfortable being around her? Was it because he...didn't want to lead her on? Or did her room have too many memories?

With resolve, she moved around him, placed her hands on his shoulder blades, and pushed.

"What are you doing?" He asked incredulously over his shoulder.

"I won't break out the booze, because we both know where that leads," she said, smiling wryly, but pushing once more. She thought she saw him blush, but probably imagined it. "But you need to sit down and pick a movie before I get angry with you again." He wasn't budging, but he looked awfully disturbed, so she moved to his side, squeezing his bicep. He gawked at her apprehensively.

"Just as friends, Vegeta. Watch a movie with a friend. Unless you'd rather keep this 'business professional?'" She cleared her throat of the note of disappointment.

His skin under her hand was warm and hard, and she dropped her hand suddenly, realizing she'd made them both uneasy, touching him.

"I don't think it wise." He stepped away from her and was already at the door. "I will take the boy tomorrow afternoon." His tone was as deferential to her as it would get.

She didn't know why she felt so uncomfortable and melancholy, but she did.

"Okay," she answered faintly. "Sorry."

He turned a bit toward her at her tone, pausing, face in the shadows, before he closed the door behind himself.

Bulma fell into the couch cushions and dropped her forehead into her palm. "Stupid," she chided herself, tangled up in feelings, feelings, and more feelings.

Where had they all come from?