It happened as she was playing a game of cards with Yamcha.
"Three of spades," he drolled, laying the card between them on the pile as they surveyed their hands calculatingly.
Trunks lay fast asleep in the bassinet beside them, though he made a noise as if distressed while he dreamt, and without looking up from her cards, Bulma rocked the bassinet gently with her toe.
"Ha!" Bulma's excitement punctuated the contemplative silence of the card table, the only light a small reading lamp pooling on the table. It was well past midnight, and the tv chattered low behind them. "Queen of spades." She slid her own card into the pile.
"Tch." Yamcha made a noise, scratching at the fuzz growing on his jaw and frowning down at the fanned cards in his hand.
"Give up. I win." Bulma absorbed her hand smugly, and then pinned Yamcha with a grin. "Admit it. You're through."
"I will not," Yamcha replied testily, eyes scanning his hand urgently. "This isn't over."
Bulma popped a fried cheese ball into her mouth and shrugged.
There was a sound behind her, and they both turned in their chairs to peer through the dark.
A silhouette emerged from the lounge's shadowed doorway.
Bulma's brows drew together. She knew that profile.
She watched Vegeta looming in the doorway with some reservation. "Do you need something, Vegeta," she asked indifferently from over her shoulder.
He stepped from the dark, all dried blood and bruises, face etched with exhaustion. "No," he replied forcefully but quietly, and forced his legs to move, one in front of the other. Bulma and Yamcha shared a glance, and then Bulma stood with a pinch of concern, pulling out the empty chair between them.
"Sit down," she ordered, waiting, and though Vegeta's face tightened with the indignity of her tone, he fell into the chair in a sprawl.
Bulma watched it all with a frown. "You gonna be okay, buddy?"
To her and Yamcha's unease, a low, grating laugh burbled up from the Prince, and he hung his head on the back of the chair.
Her eyes met Yamcha's. He glanced back and forth between Bulma and the bleeding Saiyan at their side with distress, as if saying, Do something already! She shrugged, her head shaking back and forth stubbornly, hair swinging at her chin. What was she gonna do? Vegeta was a lost cause. He beat himself up, then he lashed out when she tried to help him. She'd rode that carousel one too many times.
She put her nose into the air and looked down at her hand to make her point, and slid one more card between them with her fingertips. "Ace of spades," she enlightened Yamcha testily, and Yamcha sighed and folded, pillowing his head in his arms in defeat.
And then he stood, chair scraping the floor. "I guess I'll get going. It's my bedtime."
"Already?" Bulma complained. She hadn't had much company since she'd became pregnant, but Yamcha had become a welcome presence. There remained so much history between them and no longer any romantic interest that these late night games and movies required very little bother. Around Yamcha, she could just be.
The man on her left, however…
She scowled in his direction, smothering her irritation and standing to see Yamcha out.
"Don't stop coming around just because I won again tonight," she chided him, leading him down the dark hall towards the front door.
"Yeah, yeah, I hear you." His tone was teasing, pleasant. When they arrived at the door, they said their farewells, and she waved as he leapt into the air.
When she'd returned to the lounge, Trunks was, predictably, fussing. She couldn't even have one second to herself, could she? Vegeta had slouched even further into the chair.
Trunks was just beginning to sleep through the night, though with some complaints. She rocked the bassinet and watched his father from the corner of her eyes.
"You really did a number on yourself tonight," she mumbled, eyeing him sidelong.
"What do you care," he snapped.
She prickled with indignation. "I don't," she corrected him harshly. "Just letting you know you look like shit."
He blinked slowly, her nasty tone just sliding off his fatigued form.
He remembered a time, pressing her up against the kitchen counter in the dark, her soft pants against his skin, and an entreaty: "Stay with me tonight. For Kami's sake, just one night. Don't you care about us?" And his rebuff even as he thrust into her, "I don't."
Vegeta felt as if he were full of holes, and as he plunged, paralyzed, into the sea, all these holes filled with seawater and just caused him to sink faster.
Bulma watched him with both curiosity and concern, rifling through the cabinets in the kitchenette of the lounge. In the quiet, she dumped some frozen snacks onto a plate and popped them into the microwave.
After a moment, she returned, placing the snacks on the table and digging in without offering Vegeta any. She scooped the pile of cards and began stacking and cutting the deck, the shuffling cards snapping in the quiet.
"I don't want to play," he informed her.
"I wasn't going to ask you to," she snapped.
She knocked the cards against the table to smooth them out and then placed them to the side, snatching another snack from the plate before standing to leave.
He grabbed her hand, quick and agile, preventing her from scooping up Trunks and leaving.
And placed her hand to his face, exhaling into it with deep exhaustion.
Bulma's wide eyes regarded him with bewilderment.
Vegeta was seeking comfort from her.
It was a sound that still sometimes haunted her dreams.
Bulma padded down the hall until she drew up to the door, hand hovering over the doorknob.
With a surge of courage, she twisted it, and stepped inside.
Vegeta was trembling in the moonlight, soaked through with sweat and thrashing. His fists gripped the sheets, and a long, gutteral growl came from deep within his throat that caused her hair to stand on end and had her rethinking her original motivation.
Vegeta had been plagued by nightmares from the very moment he'd strode from Capsule 3, his anguished cries and his violent writhing had left her shaking in the next room. Sometimes he narrated them, the grisly details causing her stomach to churn and her heart to splinter. Gradually, as they began sharing a bed, the night terrors diminished, but since he'd snuck back into the compound after the Cell Games, the nightly torture had returned full-force. This wasn't the first night she'd been awoken by the familiar shouts, the sound of the lamp crashing onto the floor, the pleas for mercy. It was the first night she was going to do something about it, though.
From days long past, she knew that she had to use caution when trying to stir him. He had never deliberately hurt her during the damned nightmares, but if she wasn't careful, she could get smacked by a wayward hand, or headbutted by a solid Saiyan skull. The first and only time she hadn't been able to move out of the way quickly enough, he'd left a bruise blooming on her cheekbone, and he'd fretted over it the rest of the day, quietly paying the penance for it with apologetic gestures until she'd shooed him away in annoyance. He had loved her once, just not the most. She didn't imagine she'd get that kind of treatment anymore, so she thought it best to keep on guard.
She navigated the dark room and then rested her weight on the bed, held her hands out over him uncertainly as he shook, still deeply entrenched in the nightmare. Finally, she placed one hand on the clammy bare arm beside her. "Shhhh, Vegeta," she whispered. "Vegeta, wake up."
It was as if he hadn't heard her, and she chided herself for believing that she could just walk right in and smooth the whole thing over. She was, just, loathe to touch him after all this time, the body that had betrayed her; but in this circumstance in the right-here-right-now there was no other way. She had to go all in, or just suffer the sounds of his misery next door.
She got to her knees on his bed, the mattress giving with her weight, and placed both hands on his feverish shoulders, shaking him. "Vegeta!" She examined him with concern, his cringing, pallid face, strong brows pinching. "Vegeta!" His name was like an anchor she threw down into the dark, and she hoped that eventually he'd find it, climb up, and resurface. "Vegeta! Wake up! It's safe! Wake up!"
But to her growing distress, the plea caused him to become more panicked, and he snarled desperately, shaking his head frantically. "No. No! I won't!"
"Vegeta, it's Bulma," she tried to assure him clinically. "It's Bulma. You're dreaming. Come on. Wake up."
"You can't have me. Don't touch me!"
She couldn't help the stab of hurt but tamped it down. He was facing another enemy, and a woman who once wished to be loved didn't exist in that landscape.
"Vegeta," she continued calling, the sing song of hope. With only a moment's hesitation, she took his chin in her fingers firmly."Vegeta, wake up," she commanded. "Come back to the living."
He bucked, and it pitched her sideways. She caught herself on the edge of the bed, but suddenly a shadow was looming over her in the night. "I'll kill you," came a throaty warning, hungry for blood, and she stiffened with fear.
With her weight on her palms, she looked up slowly with dismay. His eyes were open, but unseeing. Black, but murky. Vacuous, but fanatical.
She bolted, crawling frantically out of bed, but he grabbed her ankle, pulling her back with ease.
"Vegeta!" She cried.
"I'll kill you," he snarled, half dangling her, and she kicked her legs out as hard as she could, trying to sever his hold. One of her heels made contact with his jaw, jarring him momentarily, and she dove onto the floor, rolling underneath the bed.
She shrieked as a figure dropped to its hands and knees just outside her haven, and his arm came darting forward. "C'mere, little monkey. I only want to play."
"No!" She sobbed, kicking at the hand with new terror, squirming as far away as she could from it.
To her relief, the figure straightened and disappeared, and her breath caught in her throat in relief. She had only the space of a few ragged breaths before it occurred to her that he could be anywhere when she was drug out by the back of her shirt from the other side of the bed, and she flailed, screaming.
"I'll kill you!" Vegeta bellowed in her face, his eyes glazed and the shadows against his face inky, and she flinched at his volume and sobbed.
"Vegeta, it's Bulma! Wake up, please, wake up," she begged with her hands clasped together.
"Why? Why?" This was a new voice; not the one of pure driven rage, but of betrayal, torment, and purgatory. "How could you have done this to me?" He asked someone, no one. "And I was just a boy."
Bulma choked, and brought her hands up to his face, cupping his cheeks. "Vegeta, honey. It's Bulma. Please. Please."
And as if her words had to travel a long way down, the seconds ticked by long as lifetimes, but the anchor finally hit ground this time, and Vegeta stilled under her hands.
His eyes widened right before his knees buckled.
The force of it caused them to crash to the floor in a tangle, but Bulma was just overfull with relief, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and sobbed into his shoulder. "Vegeta," she begged throatily, "please wake up."
"I—" He began, and she pulled back to look at his face, and it was him, blinking, staring outwards in shock.
She tightened her hold on him and rocked him. "I was so scared," she croaked, tears wet on his neck. "You couldn't hear me."
His arms wrapped around her of their own volition, and he stared at the wall in shock, mouth moving soundlessly. "I…I…"
"Shhhh," she hushed him, hold tightening.
He was breathing raggedly, sweat stinging his eyes. The hair at his neck felt damp with it, and he trembled despite himself. "I just," he said without control, his voice shaking. "I can't make him go away." His bare back slicked against the wall.
Bulma eased her hold on him and pulled back to look up at him with watery eyes, though the color had returned to her face. "You can't let him win, Vegeta," she whispered savagely.
"But he always wins—" he tried explaining.
"You can't," she urged. "You're stronger than him now."
"I am never strong enough," he admitted roughly, his palms coming to rest on his bare thighs, and he gazed into their emptiness.
She rested her forehead in the crook of his shoulder and sighed. The reality of the situation was returning to her, and she shifted her hips awkwardly, putting distance between them.
"Get into bed and I'll put the tv on. You're not fit to go back to sleep right now." She stood, striding across the room, even though Vegeta slouched against the wall, staring into the hands that held nothing, the hands of a man who was nothing. He dimly registered the sounds of her steps in his room, the brightness and the click of the lamp being flicked on.
As if underwater, he felt her hand on his forearm, pulling up, willing him off the floor. He sat on the bed obediently, and she stuffed some pillows behind him to bolster him. A glass of water hovered in his vision, and he took it dazedly. The tv blinked on.
He registered her weight dimly as she sat beside him, leaning against the headboard and flicking through the channels. It felt familiar, this old routine of hers as she tried to get his mind off of the visceral haunts of his mind at night. She settled on a channel, plied him with more water, and draped the blanket over his knees, before leaning back and turning to the late night movie in silence.
His breathing eventually evened, and though the face of his master was still superimposed on his lids when he closed his eyes, the intensity and realness were seeping away like blood down the train, until all that was real was the low light, the soft babbling of the movie, and the woman's solid presence beside him, watching the movie with red eyes but a firm jaw.
He wasn't a man anymore who knew anything with certainty. Where once his landscape was well-known, everything had been cast in the shadow of doubt. And yet he'd gone so low now that not even doubt troubled him. There remained no doubt now, no definitive surety or confidence or vanity, but just the inescapable knowledge that he was nothing, and that he deserved nothing. Just he, at his bottom most level, comprehending that there was no hope, just emptiness, and powerlessness, and darkness.
But just the knowing, the acknowledging, fortified him in a small way. Even if everything was taken from him, even if he could never achieve anything, even with his failures all splayed out in front of him, something had remained. Something was still left over to observe it all. And that something could only be himself. Raw.
The self that was left over straightened against the headboard with aching muscles, snaked his arm under the woman's surprised, petite form, and drew her close, exhaling as he slid his fingers through his disheveled hair with weariness. She was rigid in his grasp, and he wondered at that, wondered at how two people could inhabit the same person, the woman who came to save him tonight, crying over his suffering, and the woman who repelled his presence. And in response, in rebellion, he weaved the fingers of his hand into hers, feeling her heart hammer with lurid panic until she eventually relaxed stiffly into the crook of his arm, head resting on his shoulder as they watched the tv inattentively, sleepily, defying the night.
His hand was no longer empty.
AN: I know each chapter has its own tone, jumping from comedy to angst, and while the thing that likes order in me is just balking at it, it also just feels right. So thanks for being good sports about it. Also, the last chapter was a sort of flashback, a memory, until the end. Normally I feel like if I have to explain these things I'm not doing a good job at writing, but admittedly this story has some unusual prose. Thanks for reading!