~In the Still of the Night~
 

                                                                                           By  SSCornelia
                                                                                                         ZealPropht@aol.com
 

    The night was warm and quiet. Not a soul stirred in the Capsule Corperation. Trunks was sound asleep in his bed, mouth wide open, sprawled out with his arms and legs at various angles and the covers kicked down to the bottom of the bed. Upstairs in the master bedroom, Vegeta lay on his stomach, face turned to the side and his arms around the pillow. Even in sleep, he looked as cranky as ever, with his brows drawn together in their perpetual scowl. At the other side of the bed was Bulma. Of all the people asleep in her home, she alone was not having a restfull night. Her face was contorted in anguish, her eyes tightly shut, sweat beading her forehead. Two large tears leaked out from beneath her eyelids as she rolled onto her right side, away from her husband.

    "No..." she whispered in her sleep. "Come back...It wasn't my fault. Don't leave me!" As her pleas grew more desperate, Bulma started to thrash a bit and finally sat up with a scream. Ever a light sleeper where his mate was concerned, Vegeta bolted upright, going Super Saiyajin and scanning the room for danger even before he was totally awake.

    "What?! Where?!," he demanded. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he looked over at the woman who shared his bed with a confused and sleepy glare. Seeing her holding the covers to her face and sobbing, Vegeta sighed and released his Super Saiyajin form, powering down. "What the hell is the matter?"

    "I...I...," she gasped, trying to talk around her crying and the covers that were muffling the sounds. "I had th-this hor-horible d-d-dream!" Breaking into fresh tears, she quit talking. Vegeta rolled his eyes and sighed again, laying back against his pillow.

    "Is that all? You're a weakling to be frightened by something that can't hurt you. Now, stop that annoying sound. You want to wake up the brat? It was just a dream. Go back to sleep. " Pulling up the covers under his chin, the prince prepared to do the same. Bulma made an angry sound and he was suddenly smacked in the face with her pillow.

    "You're a heartless bastard, Vegeta!," she cried, tossing off her covers and getting up, grabbing her robe as she stormed from the room.

    "Just where are you going?" he called after her.

    "Away from you!," was her reply from the hall. Vegeta scowled deeper. If she wanted to be a baby, let her. He wasn't about to go chasing after her in the middle of the night. After all, as soon as she calmed down and started acting resonable, she'd be back. Assured by this knowledge, Vegeta closed his eyes and got comfortable to listen for her return. It would gall her to realize that he'd known she would come back and it gave the prince some small pleasure to irritate her in this harmless way. She'd get back into bed and pretend to still be mad at him and then he'd put his arms around her waist and pull her against his chest and just hold her. She'd snuggle up to him and that would be the end of it. But five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen and Bulma still hadn't returned.

    "Kuso!," he cursed softly, realizing that the only way that she would come back was if he went after her and made a spectacle of himself for her benafite. There was no way to avoid it. Not for the first time Vegeta wondered why in the world he bothered with the wretched woman at all and didn't just leave her right here and now. That would teach her. He should just grab his armor and depart from this wretched world and never come back. He was wasting his talents here as it was. Besides the fool Kakarot, there was no one even close to his own power level to spar with and even his own brat, the one he had sired as to not let his family bloodline die out completely, was too caught up in spending time with Kakarot's youngest son, Goten, for him to show very much intrest in sparring with his own father. But that would be delt with later, hopefully after he'd talked Bulma into rejoining him in bed. It was just too damn lonely for one person in that king sized monster.

    Tossing off his covers, he rose from the bed, not bothering to grab something to cover himself with. The light blue cotton boxers Bulma had forced him to wear would just have to do. Modesty was something that humans seemed to value, sometimes more then their lives. There was nothing wrong with showing a bit of flesh, in his opinion. It was just another silly human quirk that was designed to irritate him. It wasn't too hard to track down which way Bulma had ran. If there was one nice thing about his mate, however irritating it might be at any other time, she was loud. That, and he had come to recognize her "feel", just as he could recognize Kakarot's "feel" by his power level. He followed her psychic scent to a spare room on the lower floor of the building. Ironicly, he noted that it was the same room he has stayed in before he'd started sleeping with her. The door wasn't shut the whole way so he nudged it open enough for him to slip quietly through. Bulma was sprawled across the bed, crying loudly into the pillows. At first, Vegeta didn't do anything, merely watched her. He noted with a certain amount of curiosity that she had left everything the same way as when he had moved out. The furniture was all in dissaray and there was a shoulder guard in the corner that he had been missing. Nothing was changed in the least little bit, except that his dirty dishes had been removed. Silly human sentimentality again, he sighed.

    Walking over to his former bed, he sat down on the edge and waited for his mate to acknowledge his presence. For a while, she just continued to cry and it made Vegeta wonder exactly how much water the human body contained within it. The notion was short lived, though, because he assumed it wasn't very good to go on crying for this long. He placed a gentle hand on her lower back and felt her stiffen. "What do you want now? Have you come to insult my feelings again?," she demanded, without looking at him.

    "I came to ask if you were ready to come back to bed and quit this idiotic behavior before your whole body dries up from lack of water." Bulma cursed in the most unlady like way. It would have made him burst out laughing if her fist hadn't grazed his jaw. It did nothing to hurt him but probably hurt her like hell. He caught her wrists in his hands as she sat up and tried to pummle him with her fists, despite the futility of it. They struggled briefly since she seemed determined to hit him. Eventually, she found her arms tossed up around his neck and his arms around her back, holding her closely so that her had rested against the crook of his shoulder. Bulma surrendered to his embrace and clung to him, shaking with the last of her sobs. Slowly, almost unaware he was doing it, Vegeta rocked her as one would a child, his cheek resting against her hair and his hands stroking small circles against the silky material that covered her back. "Now that you are seeing reason, would you at least mind telling me what this is all about?"

    Bulma drew in a shivery breath and hugged him tigher, as if his body somehow lent her the strength to speak. "I don't know how the dream started really. But I remember that the three of us, you, me, and Trunks, were walking down some long winding road and there were wheat fields all around us on both sides. I didn't want to go on, because I was tired. I wanted to go back home, but somehow the road closed up behind us so that we couldn't go back, only forward. So we were walking and suddenly, some awful shadowy person showed up and beat up Trunks! They just appeared out of nowhere and started mauling him with their power blasts. It was terrible! I couldn't do anything! I thought you would try and stop them from hurting our son, but when I looked, you weren't even there! Trunks fought with all his might but the other person turned Super Saiyajin and hurt him so badly...." Bulma broke off as tears welled again in her eyes. "There was so much blood...blood...And he wasn't breathing...." Vegeta absently kissed the top of her head and thought over what she said.

    "Was that all?"

    The woman in his arms took a deep breath and shook her head slightly as she calmed herself. "No, it isn't. Somehow Gokou showed up and together we got Trunks to a hospital where they put him on life support. They said they needed to give him a blood transfusion but I didn't have the right type and neither did Gokou. I knew that couldn't be right because Trunks is half human and my blood would have worked perfectly well. But the doctor insisted he needed pure Saiyajin blood of a royal line. That obviously meant you. But I didn't know where to find you. I looked everywhere! Gokou told me not to waste my time because even if I found you, you wouldn't care enough about either Trunks or I to donate your blood. He said that you were too proud and that I should just stay with Trunks for the remaining hours he had left to him." She stopped again and whimpered, biting her lower lip till it nearly bled. "But I couldn't do that. I had to find you."

    "Damn that pestering, low-class warrior. Even in the dream world he has to mess with me and my own. I swear that one of these days I'll beat Kakarot and then he'll learn who his betters are!" The Saiyajin's lip curled as he thought about that interfering, brain-damaged idiot. Pushing the angry thoughts from his mind, he realized that Bulma had started talking again.

    "Everywhere I went, I asked if people had seen you. No one would tell me, they just kept insisting that I was wasting my time. I finally gave up hope of finding you and was going to go back to the hospital when all of a sudden, there you were! I ran up to you and explained what happened. I was so overjoyed to see you but you...you..."

    "I what?"

    Bulma swallowed. "You hit me," she whispered. "You backhanded me and started yelling at me that you had found out about Trunk's injury long ago and when you got to the hospital, you found him dying alone. You told me that the doctors had said I ran off, trying to find you, and that it was my fault for not looking hard enough so you could give blood to our son. As a result, he died moments before you arrived. You said that because Trunks died, you would never forgive me, saying it was all my fault. You said you would leave me. I begged you not to but you refused to listen. I couldn't stand to live without you or Trunks in my life. I implored you to kill me but you laughed and said death wasn't good enough for me. You wanted me to suffer, all alone, with my guilt and my sorrow. You lit off into the sky and I started running after you, calling for you to wait and not to leave me too but you didn't listen. I kept running and running and running..."
As her words trailed off, Vegeta felt her hug him tightly. Without looking, he knew her eyes had closed in exauhstion. He reached one arm under his wife's legs, keeping the other firmly around her back. He lifted her up and carried her from the room back to their bedroom. His grip started to loosen as he laid her on the bed and suddenly her arms tightened in an almost death-grip.

    "Relax," he told her gently as he slid into bed next to her without releasing his hold on her. "I'm not going anywhere."

    "Oh, Vegeta," she whispered, a yawn cutting out part of her words. "Promise me...Promise me that you'll never leave me. I don't think I could stand it. It's hard enough when you go away to Dende knows where to do whatever it is you do by yourself. I get so scared that this might be the time when you go away and never come back." Bulma rested her head on his chest, listening to his heart beat.

    "I would never leave you, woman," Vegeta answered her, purposefully forgetting that only a few moments earlier he had been contemplating flying off into the night without a backwards glance. I wasn't serious, he huffed to himself. Besides, where else could he get a home cooked meal, even if it was barely adequate in quality? At least there was quantity, he grumbled mentaly. At the thought of food, his stomach rumbled ominously but he pushed the hunger cramps aside and concentrated on making Bulma feel better, at least enough so that she would go back to sleep, allowing him to do the same. I'm getting as soft as the rest of these humans and would-be humans and half-humans that I'm sharing this world with. It's a pity and a disgrace to be reduced from the Prince of the Saiyajins to the "happily married man", the human saying that is so commonly thrust in my face.

    "Really? You mean that?" Bulma shifted her head slightly and looked up into her husband's dark eyes. She could see how soft they looked, not their normal fierce, reflective surface that mirrored tenderness and reflected back scorn.

    "I said as much didn't I? You're my mate," he stated matter-of-factly, as if that explained everything. "You're loud and stupid, ugly and deaf, and you cook so badly you could burn water. You're the greatest weakling I have ever encountered in all my years of living and when I deigned to take you on as my mate-"

    "You did WHAT!?," Bulma exploded, half sitting up.

    "-I had no idea what I was getting myself into because somehow your genes are the predominant ones in our son. He has your hair color, your dissposition, and probably has the second largest mouth on the planet next to yours and Kakarot's brood. The only thing he recieved from me was my power, which I admit is still lacking at his age, and some of my facial structure."

    "And he has your height, don't forget," Bulma retorted smugly, knowing that Vegeta's short stature was always a sore point with him. Having seen the way their son would turn out, at least in looks, was the best part of meeting their son from the Future, even if he was from a sub-alternate galaxy. But Vegeta continued, oblivious to her needling.

    "I have often wondered why I stay with you, especially at times like this when you're annoying me and depriving me of a few hours sleep before our son wakes up and starts tearing up the house. But regardless of all that, without me, you could never survive on your own and I realize this. You need me to keep you in line and because I have nothing better to do with my time, I took it upon myself to look after you." Having finished with his little speech, Vegeta snorted. "Besides, if I didn't, I'd end up living with Kakarot and that would be even worse then listening to you ask stupid questions and bitching at me and keeping me up in the middle of the night."

    "You may well end up living with him yet, if you aren't carefull," Bulma remarked causticly, but there was no true menace behind her voice. The way she said the words, though, made Vegeta's lips curl up into a smirk.

    "And I don't know why I put up with you either, by the way. You're rude, obnoxious, arrogant, self-centered, entirely too proud, pig-headed, mule-brained-" She didn't get much further, though, because at that instant, Vegeta tilted her face up to his and kissed her soundly on the lips, stilling them with the pressure. His hands roamed her body with easy familiarity that spoke of a good deal of memorization. "I guess we were just made for each other," Bulma finished lamely when she was finally allowed to speak again. His response was a grunt followed by a large yawn that, had there been light enough, could have probably shown her his tonsils clearly.

    "If it gives you comfort to think that, go right ahead. It doesn't bother me that you are simply too dumb to understand my way of thinking." Adjusting the covers around them both, Vegeta reached behind him and plumped up his pillow before relaxing back onto it. "Now shut up and go to sleep, woman." The last things that the prince was aware of before finally getting the rest he deserved was Bulma's warm lips on his cheek and the whispered words, "I love you, even if you are a conceited bastard," in his ear.