Imbroglio

[noun]

An unwanted, extremely confused, complicated or embarrassing situation, full of trouble and problems.

{archaic} A confused heap.

The house was empty, or, at least, her parents weren't home. Vegeta was in the Gravity Room, as per usual, and none of the employees ventured into the family quarters unless it was absolutely urgent, so they had the place to themselves. They would remain undisturbed for the foreseeable future, and she wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. A knot of unease was contracting ever tighter in Bulma's stomach, surging through her veins and prickling beneath the surface of her skin. It felt as though someone had pumped her full of gasoline and then carelessly tossed a match in her direction.

Yamcha stood against one of the kitchen counters, looking just as uncomfortable as she felt, shifting his body weight nervously from side to side. The very sight of him made Bulma feel a bit sick, and the overwhelming finality of what she had to do hit her with a ferocity that was hard to handle. It had been months, maybe even years in the making, and now it was coming to a head.

She had caught him at a bar a few days earlier with some young, ditzy blonde – big breasted and small brained – sprawling across his lap, cooing about how it was so awesome to hang out with a super cool baseball star. He'd insisted that it was innocent, that absolutely nothing had happened between them, despite the fact he had told Bulma earlier that day that he wasn't feeling well after a training session gone wrong, would have an early night, and would call her in the morning. When Bulma had spotted him with a drink in hand, the aforementioned floozy, and several of his baseball buddies during what was supposed to be a night out with some of the Capsule Corp. employees, she'd lost it.

The drink in her hand was thrown, rather unceremoniously, over the scar faced warrior and his mystery companion, and Bulma retreated back to Capsule Corp. without a word.

She had been dutifully ignoring him for the past forty-eight hours, ignoring everyone, really, trying to gather her thoughts and process what had to happen next. When she finally found the courage to sift through the barrage of text messages and voicemails he'd sent her, mostly weak excuses and frantic apologies, she'd called him back and told Yamcha that they needed to talk face-to-face. And now, here he was, standing in her kitchen, looking as shit as Bulma felt, the bouquet of flowers he had pitifully brought as a peace offering crammed into the trashcan.

"Bulma, please say something," Yamcha said, timorously fidgeting with the sleeves of his shirt. He could only hold her gaze for a couple of seconds at a time before forcing himself to look away, and the cowardice of the gesture only added to Bulma's anger. She tried to quell it, telling herself that she needed to be the bigger person, and that a temper tantrum would solve nothing, but the urge to rip him a new one was rising within her, gathering momentum with every passing second.

There were a thousand things on her mind, battling for dominance on the tip of her tongue. A slew of insults and accusations, daggered words designed to hurt him in unimaginable ways. But none of them came out. Bulma couldn't formulate the words and so she simply asked "Why?"

"I... I don't know why. I knew I shouldn't have lied to you, but I just... didn't think. I know I've fucked up, and I'm not asking you to forgive me right away. But just... please don't give up on us."

"You fucked her." It was a statement, not a question. Bulma forced him to meet her steely gaze,

Yamcha blushed, shaking his head violently. He reached out to touch her arm, his outstretched hand left dangling when she immediately recoiled away from his touch.

"Bulma, please."

"Don't."

"Am I not good enough for you anymore, is that is?"

"No, of course you're good enough. Too good."

"Then why?"

Yamcha's throat bobbed, opening his mouth to speak but saying nothing. He sighed, ran his hands through his hair and closed his eyes. "I just wanted to hang out with the guys. You know, have a normal night that didn't revolve around post -apocalyptic futures and murderous robots, and being under the same roof as a guy who literally killed me. I just wanted to feel like everyone else for a few hours. That chick and her friends recognised me, and she wanted to hang out and..." He trailed off, finally opening his eyes again but refusing to meet Bulma's line of sight.

Bulma let out a bitter bark of a laugh, tucking a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear. "You don't think I'd like to have a normal life sometimes? Yeah, we've gone on amazing journeys, but I've also had to deal with shit no person should ever have to go through. It makes me want to scream when I see everyone else going about their day-to-day lives, completely oblivious to the chaos in this world. It fucking sucks Yamcha, but this is the life we chose for ourselves so we have to suck it up. The difference between you and I is I don't throw myself at other men to make myself feel better."

The warrior growled, his hands curling into fists. "So, it's alright for you to go out spending a fortune on clothes for Vegeta, and I can't complain about another man living with you, but I can't have any female friends or fans, right?"

"You don't want me to buy clothes for Vegeta anymore? Fine. The alternatives are he gets to wear your clothes, or he walks around naked. Either option is fine by me, so I'll let you pick," Bulma snapped. "Besides, there's a big difference between letting someone live in the compound so we can keep an eye on him and stop him killing us all, and sleeping with someone else."

Yamcha scoffed, "Oh please, I've seen the way you look at him."

Bulma felt the heat rise from her neck, and turned her face away from Yamcha. Her physical attraction to Vegeta had been growing, and while at first it had been a fun way to tease both Yamcha and the Saiyan prince, and she had delighted in their agitated and embarrassed reactions, it had quickly spiralled into something Bulma could not control. She found herself admiring the often half-naked Saiyan for just a few moments too long, or shifting her routine slightly so that she could catch a glimpse of him hot and sweaty and fresh from his work out. She even enjoyed their arguments, secretly relishing in the way they riled one another up when fighting about modifications for the Gravity Room, or Vegeta's flagrant disregard for his safety. It provided Bulma with a sense of purpose that she felt she had lost after the Boy From The Future's arrival. She could no longer tell herself that it was okay to innocently appreciate obvious physical beauty, especially as her thoughts grew less than innocent. Still, she had never followed Yamcha into (rumoured) infidelity. She had always been physically loyal to her lover despite his many indiscretions, and was proud of the fact that she had maintained a decade long relationship without cheating.

"So that's what this is about? You were punishing me because you can't handle being weaker than Vegeta?"

"I can handle him being stronger than me, he's a goddamn alien designed for fighting. I'm not enough of an egomaniac to pretend I could ever compete with him. It's the way you fawn over that rat-bastard like a love sick schoolgirl that just fucking gets to me."

Yamcha's statement, and the sour way he spat the words out irked Bulma, and she had to draw in a deep breath to steady herself. "I fawn over him?"

"'Oh, let me patch you up, Vegeta', 'you need to rest, Vegeta'. 'You're going to get yourself killed, Vegeta.' Why do you even give a damn?"

"Because I'm a good fucking person and I don't want him to die," Bulma said, crossing her arms. Her cheeks were still warm, but embarrassment had given way to frustration, which was now evolving into unbridled anger. "Plus, if you haven't noticed, we need him. You heard what that kid said. Everyone will die unless we can beat those androids. We need all the help we can get, and that includes Vegeta, otherwise we're going to be slaughtered like cattle. So don't try and deflect and make this about me. You're the one in the wrong, and me stitching him up and making sure he doesn't kill himself doesn't give you an excuse to screw some random floozy you met in a dive bar."

"I didn't say it did."

"Well, you're sure acting that way."

They stared at one another for a minute, saying nothing. Bulma's chest heaved, desperately trying to quell her anger before it erupted and became unmanageable, trying to push the tears scalding her eyes away before they fell. Yamcha was hunched in on himself defensively, his mouth clamped shut in a tight line, brows knitted together. She didn't want to speak first, didn't want to give him the satisfaction, give into his provocations and bite.

Yamcha was the first to break the silence, dropping his head and guiltily shuffling his feet. He looked like a naughty child who had just been caught with his fingers in the cookie jar, and Bulma almost felt sorry for him. Almost. "I...I've never ever meant to hurt you, you know that, right?"

"That doesn't make it better, Yamcha."

"We can fix this, right?"

Bulma swallowed the lump in her throat and clutched tightly at her forearms to hide the way her hands trembled. Her mind wandered to the last time all of her friends had been together in one place – the day The Boy From The Future had crash landed into their lives to impart his bleak warning. If she was being completely honest with herself, Goku's bizarre comment about having a baby had been the final nail in the coffin for their relationship. To her horror, Yamcha took that as his cue to propose to Bulma, setting up a romantic picnic complete with champagne on ice and a massive punnet of strawberries a month or so later. When he'd dropped down on one knee, and the realisation of what he was doing set in, she'd tried her best to let him down as gently as possible, citing that she wasn't quite ready to settle down. It was then that she realised they had no future, because the thought of dedicating the rest of her life to her childhood sweetheart filled her with a cold, inescapable fear. Yet she had still tried hard to make things work, to not abandon over a decade of shared experiences and melded hearts just because she'd grown bored, for lack of a better word, of their relationship.

Stumbling across him with that young slip of a girl, probably at least six or seven years her junior and blissfully naive to the world that Bulma inhabited, had been the straw that broke the camels back. She could no longer keep up with the charade, could no longer force herself to keep acting as though she and Yamcha were the same kids who had fallen in love all those years ago. He had burnt away the last vestiges of hope, gambled the shattered remains of their relationship for a cheap thrill with a girl whose name he probably didn't even know. He had humiliated in the most basic of ways, throwing months of effort on her part back in her face. She hated him for it. She hated herself for letting it come to this.

Her lungs constricted, and for a sickening moment Bulma was worried she might actually die there and then.

"No, I don't think we can."

Vegeta's muscles were screaming at him, begging him to stop.

He had all but mastered four hundred times gravity. Sure, it had nearly killed him initially, but with each passing moment his body acclimated to the intense pressure, evolving and adapting to cater to it. Yet still, nothing. He had expected to achieve Super Saiyan status by now, after all, a lowly third-class warrior had managed to ascend after training in only one hundred times Earths gravity, and that kid, a fucking mystery prodigy child, had managed to achieve the legend – Vegeta's birthright – before him.

Vetega growled, firing at one of the drones, feeling nothing but frustration when it shut down and dropped to the floor with a tinny clank instead of exploding. The clever little blue-haired bitch had made them hardier, as per his request, and he had to admire her for her ingenuity and willingness to help him with his gruelling training regime, despite the fact he had, not-so-long-ago, threatened to blow her miserable planet to smithereens.

But he craved the satisfaction of destruction, the thrill of entire planets falling under his might, and his inability to obliterate one of her small inventions only fuelled the inferno raging within him. His shattered pride needed to see the results of a lifetime of pushing his body to its limits and beyond, yet now he couldn't even fell a simple ball of nuts and bolts.

"FUUCK!"

Vegeta felt his knees buckle without his consent, his aching body finally telling him that enough was enough, refusing to co-operate any further, at least for today. He felt no closer to achieving the Legend, but he had exhausted his energy supply. Bitterly, he wondered how Kakarot did it. How Kakarot had pushed beyond the limits of a lowly Saiyan born with a power level so low he'd been immediately shipped off planet. How Kakarot had battled with Frieza for so long without burning himself and collapsing like a dying star.

Most of all he wondered why. Why Kakarot and not him?

Why had an imbecile who had lived his life oblivious to the truth of his own species been the one to ascend to Legendary status? Why had he, a stranger to the intergalactic power play that had wrought havoc across the universe, been the one to avenge the genocide of their people? Why had Kakarot been the one to attain the necessary skills required to destroy Frieza while Vegeta, trapped for two decades as a glorified slave to the disgusting bastard, could only lie back and die like a dog?

And why had that lavender haired boy beaten him to it a second time?

He had spend months rolling these questions over and over in his mind, torturing himself with his own shortcomings. With a frustrated growl Vegeta dragged himself up off the floor, groping for the control panel and turning off the gravity. He felt his muscles relax instinctively, his Saiyan genealogy taking advantage of small mercies and using these blessed moments of release to begin stitching together torn sinews and splintered bones.

He exited the chamber, the sudden rush of the early evening air engulfing him, and he closed his eyes for a moment, simply enjoying the nothingness. The cool breeze felt refreshing against his abused skin, moist with the promise of rain, and he relished in it for a few sweet seconds. But then his stomach curled in on itself, gurgling noisily, and with a huff he paced towards the house so he could find some way to appease his massive appetite.

He could sense Bulma, her laughably miniscule ki throbbing in the kitchen. Though it was tiny, barely detectable at first, he had gone out of his way to hone his senses so that he could always find her – and her parents – no matter where they were in the compound. It made locating them when he needed a new battle suit, or modifications to the Gravity Room, easier. But it also meant he could avoid them whenever the desire to do so struck. Which was almost all the time.

He considered temporarily abandoning his quest for food, trying to decide whether it would be worth putting up with his hunger a little longer and coming back in her absence. He had little patience for the oft-vulgar woman and her nugatory attempts at conversation. Her lewd mouth and precocious nature riled him in a way he'd never before experienced, testing his already lacking forbearance beyond its limits. The fact Yamcha habitually clung to her like a shadow did little to endear her to him, the scarred fighters mere presence a personal affront to Vegeta, a tumbling mess of weak-willed snivelling and under-confidence in combat. Nonetheless, he had grown accustomed to Bulma's presence, and her furious demands that he let her tend to the worst of his wounds. They offered him brief moments of respite, allowing him to drift out of his own head while she played nurse and chastised him for damaging his body. He would close his eyes and just float as her tiny fingers fluttered over scars and scabs. Now and again he'd peak at her, finding amusement in the way her little tongue darted out of her mouth in concentration, or admiring the way her skin looked, almost Saiyan-like, stained with his blood. It reminded him of his long-destroyed home. Truth be told, he sometimes enjoyed the back-and-forth, their heated arguments supplying him with just enough social interaction to keep him from completely losing his mind. Without Nappa and Raditz, he was severely lacking in that department, and while he had never been one for forging friendships or relying on the other people, he could only remain trapped within his mind for so long before it became unbearable.

And she was by herself, unmoving and undisturbed, so it wouldn't be too awful to cross her path in his quest for food.

He entered the kitchen, his stomach growling and betraying his needs, and his mouth unconsciously filled with saliva. Vegeta had anticipated a snippy comment about him trailing mud and blood along the tiled floor, but to his surprise she said nothing, not even acknowledging his presence. He opened him mouth to say something shitty and inflammatory, but stopped when he spotted her.

Bulma was sat at the little breakfast table, her head down in her arms, face hidden beneath a fan of teal curls. Vegeta could tell she was crying, not just by the muffled sobs coming from her trembling body, but because of the wafting scent of hot, salty tears coming from her direction. He suspected she hadn't noticed him yet, perhaps too lost in her own grief to have, or simply lacking the observational skills to sense him. Humans were incredibly flawed that way. Maybe she did know he was there, but was ashamed of her vulnerability. He told himself he didn't care, that her sadness meant nothing to him and the dull ache in his chest was entirely coincidental.

He strode over to the fridge, skin prickling, and began to root through its contents for a snack. He heard her shift slightly, tensing at the sound but carried on regardless. When he turned back around Bulma's head was lifted and she was staring at him. Her pale face was red and swollen, and her beautiful blue eyes, wet and glossy, told the story of a burnt out galaxy. Dimming and lovely and little more than the shattered remains of something that was once magnificent.

The pithy remarks he would usually bark her way dried up in his throat, and his adams apple bobbed almost painfully. He had never seen Bulma look so vulnerable. He had seen her scream and shout (both at him and her weakling of a mate) and quake, but never he'd never seen such a dejected creature as the one currently sat in front of him. Looking at her made him feel lonely, reminding him briefly of his childhood, and those first isolated nights he spent staring into the vast abyss of space after learning of the genocide of his species. He internally cursed her for evoking such a pathetic emotion, damned himself still holding on to ill-begotten memories that he had spent years assuaging with every planet he purged.

He wanted to leave her to wallow in her misery, knowing he would have done so with ease only a few years ago. But he couldn't compel his body to move, his dark eyes locked on her blue ones, so he simply waited.

She hadn't cried until after Yamcha had left.

He had cried, pleaded with Bulma to forgive him, to give him another chance and he would never let her down again. It had splintered her heart, the shards slicing through flesh and staining her insides, but she held back her emotions as best she could. Breaking would have shattered her resolve and prolonged the painfully inevitable. Not to mention, she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of her heartache.

If she was being honest with herself, the whole incident at the bar had hurt Bulma's pride more than it had hurt her heart. Things hadn't sat well between the pair of them for a while, and she had tried to put that down to getting older and growing up, because no relationship, even a relationship seeped in insane adventures and mystical beings, could stay childlike and fun forever. At some point they had to mature, and work at themselves as individuals and as a couple, right? The passion fizzled away completely, and it felt as though they'd only remained together out of habit, and because they were scared of the change that would inevitably be thrust upon them in the coming years. Bulma and Yamcha both deserved more than the last vestiges of something wonderful, but worn out, so it had been time to say goodbye.

But she loved him, albeit with the same platonic love she felt for Goku and Krillin, and a life without Yamcha in it felt unbearably empty. There was a distinct possibility that she had lost Yamcha for good, and her rejection would send him spiralling beyond her reach forever. The very thought of never seeing him again, never sharing her life with him again, opened up an aching wound in Bulma's chest, and she felt a new flurry of tears well to the surface.

She didn't want to feel this way, torn between the desperate need to salvage the broken fragments of their bond, and the resentment that churned within her as a consequence of his cheating.

Most of all she felt incredibly lost and lonely, feeling the absence of her friends all the more as she sat sobbing, alone, in her kitchen.

Excluding the Saiyan prince skulking around Capsule Corp., Krillin and Yamcha were the only members of the group who maintained regular contact with her. Goku, Gohan and Piccolo had, in their usual way, largely abandoned the outside world in order to train harder and avoid distractions. Chi Chi had been very vocal with her disgust, having only had her husband back for a few hours before he snatched their young son away from her for days or weeks at a time, and Bulma was hesitant to bother the younger woman with her own comparatively small problems when she had so much piling up on her already over-flowing plate. Tien and Chiaotzu had, of course, disappeared into the wilderness or the mountains, or wherever it was they went to train. She had her doubts that she would she them again before the androids arrived. Truth be told, she had her doubts that she would see any of them again before the androids arrived.

They were a confraternity of misfits; sharing a bond that was unbreakable, and built on foundations of magic and heroism. But they gathered like Dragon Balls, only truly reuniting to rectify a wrong and restore the Earth from chaos. Then, when they'd fulfilled their wish, they scattered across the globe, their ties to one another turning to stone again for another year until it was time to wake the dragon.

And Bulma... Bulma was left abandoned yet again. Left increasingly on the sidelines as each year passed, unable to keep up physically. Unable to adapt to a normal life after a decade of adventuring. Alone in a superficial, unsuspecting world that could never understand her or the secret society she inhabited, leaving her unfulfilled and forlorn.

The creak of the fridge door startled her, and her head snapped up to source the offender. Vegeta was rummaging through the groceries with one hand, the other gripping tightly on the fridge door, his naked back turned to her. He had a few new scratches and bruises littered across his skin, and the bandages on his knuckles, the one Bulma had wrapped herself a few days earlier, were damp and bloody. But it was all superficial, and they were minor considering the injuries she had tended in the past.

She wondered how long he had been there, feeling faintly embarrassed to be caught in such a state, but too worn out to really care. The regarded each other for a moment, Bulma flinching when something resembling pity flashed across his face for a nano-second. She could deal with his spite, and his fractious nature, but his pity wounded her pride almost as much as Yamcha's betrayal.

"Woman, are you going to keep staring at me like that?" He growled, plucking an apple, a bunch of bananas and a punnet of grapes from fridge. He dumped the fruit on the table opposite Bulma, pulling out the chair and collapsing into it. It was rare for him to willingly spend time with anyone, usually skulking off whenever possible and seeking out Bulma or her father only when he needed help with something in order to advance his training. He had, surprisingly frequently, allowed Bulma to patch up any wounds he had, seemingly trusting her more since the Gravity Room explosion to the point he no longer complained when she insisted she clean him up and check him over. Sometimes she could even get him to engage in conversation, and though it was mostly her doing the talking, Vegeta would occasionally reply and add a dry remark or two of his own.

But even then her company served a purpose, and she couldn't remember the last time he had ever willingly shared her company. If ever.

Bulma watched him for a moment as he peeled and devoured two of the bananas in about thirty seconds flat. He picked up the apple next, glancing at her for a brief moment before returning his attention to his pile of snacks. She couldn't tell if he knew she was crying, and self-consciously wiped at her face with the back of her hands. She didn't know why she said what she did next, just blurting the words out without really thinking.

"I want you to kill Yamcha."

"Okay," Vegeta said simply, taking a bite out of his apple.

Bulma paled. "Wait, just like that?"

"Of course. It's been far too long since I was able to kill someone, and it's the least I can do, given your hospitality." Vegeta's lips quirked, and he chuckled quietly to himself. He finished the apple with his second bite, tossing the core to the side to shove a fistful of grapes into his mouth.

His eyes burned with something Bulma had never seen in him before, and it took a moment for her to understand exactly what was going on. "You're... you're joking, aren't you?"

Vegeta's smirk widened, and for a moment it looked as though he might break out in a genuine, honest-to-God smile. "It's not that I wouldn't relish in making your boyfriend suffer, but I can't see your band of merry men taking it well. While it would be fun to do the android's job for them, I'd rather focus on destroying them and besting Kakarot, so I can reclaim my title as the strongest fighter in the universe."

Despite living with him for nearly a year – more, if you included his brief spell on Earth between their arrival home on Namek and the ominous arrival of the mysterious Boy From The Future – Vegeta still remained very much an enigma. One, to her dismay, Bulma couldn't seem to crack. Still, he was attempting some sort of humour, and he didn't seem to be making fun of her, but rather trying to make her laugh.

"Geez, don't joke about things like that! You had me worried there for a second."

"You're the one making the requests, woman." Vegeta said, raising a single brow. He finished chewing another one of the bananas, eyeing her carefully when he began speaking again. "I take it you and your lover have had a spat of sorts?"

"Why do you care?"

"I don't."

An uncomfortable silence settled between them, and Bulma began chewing on a hangnail to release some of the bristling tension. The skin tore, drawing a little blood, and she hissed to herself. Vegeta's nostrils flared, his mouth curling down at the sides. He sighed, crossing his arms across his chest, muttering something to himself about pathetic human emotions before asking her a single, simple question. "What happened?"

Bulma eyed Vegeta suspiciously, mimicking him by crossing her own arms and looking away. "Why are you even bothering?"

"Because your miserable state of self-pity is pissing me off, and you humans seem to relish in spilling every detail of your lives to one another."

She drew in a ragged breath, crushing down the fresh set of tears boiling within her, the humiliation of Yamcha's betrayal fresh in her blood, coupled with the indignity of being scrutinised and interrogated by a man with the social skills of a rock. A very attractive rock, but a rock nonetheless. A rock who had, on occasion, massacred entire planets with his bare hands, and had very nearly obliterated her own planet in an attempt to quench his thirst for power.

Something about her, vulnerable and forlorn, intrigued him. It drove his focus away from his failings, and Vegeta felt a flicker of superiority alight within him. He had been indebted to Bulma and her family from the moment he'd arrived back on Earth. He could kill them, easily, but he'd chosen not to, and in doing so he'd become reliant on her for the technology needed to better himself.

"He cheated on me. I found him with some chick in a bar and...and he cheated on me."

Her confession startled him, and he had to mull over the words in order for them to make sense. As far as Vegeta could tell, Bulma was perhaps the closest thing to true royalty this miserable planet had to offer. Her inventions were so deeply imbedded into the day-to-day lives of humans that if she were to suddenly recall each and every product society would likely crumble before her. Her cunning little brain had amassed her an incomparable wealth, and she was pleasant on the eyes. Very pleasant. Yet that moron, a man not even fit to lick Vegeta's boots, had traded her for a cheap liaison with another woman.

Humans never failed to amazing him with their unrelenting stupidity.

"Well, he is inferior to you in every way except for battle, and even then he only beats you by a thin margain. Perhaps he was trying to comfort himself with his own lowly standards to compensate."

Bulma smiled, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Vegeta suddenly felt uncomfortable. "Careful, Vegeta. That almost sounds like a compliment."

"Tch, don't be stupid. I'm just making an observation on status. I don't understand why you entertain him in the first place. He's an annoying little fly."

"Maybe to you," Bulma said, her face beginning to fall. "But not to me. To me he was my prince charming for so many years. My best friend. So strong and brave. Things have been... wrong for a while, but... this isn't how I wanted things to end."

Vegeta rolled his eyes, his knuckles whitening. "That man is no prince."

"Sorry, did I offend the Prince of all Saiyans with my insolence?" She was challenging him, trying to bait him into an argument. She was succeeding.

"Woman, I am the heir to the throne of the mightiest warrior race to have ever existed. To have a man such as Yamcha be compared to me so freely is practically blasphemy."

"Actually, I never compared the two of you," Bulma's eyes were glittering now, taking sadistic pleasure in Vegeta's reaction. The little bitch enjoyed getting under his skin, and aggravating him. He hated her for it, but this was better than her pathetic snivelling. "I just said he was my prince."

"Tch."

An awkward silence settled between them once more, and Vegeta picked at the remnants of his snack. He was still hungry, but he had been hoping to temporarily satiate his appetite just enough to resume his training. But his body was refusing to co-operate, sore and exhausted, and he'd allowed himself to get too comfortable in the Earth woman's company. He couldn't muster the strength needed to get back out there, and he quietly decided he would push himself twice as hard tomorrow as punishment. He hadn't noticed the way Bulma's teeth began to work her bottom lip as they lapsed into wordlessness, nor had he picked up on her fluctuating mood. He only picked up on the change when he heard her sniff, and a single teardrop hit the kitchen table-top with a soft splat.

"I hate him." Bulma whispered, her voice hoarse.

"No you don't."

"What the hell do you know?"

Vegeta exhaled, uncrossing his arms and relaxing his stance a little. "I know hate, and you don't hate him."

She looked up at him, her eyes swimming, her bottom lip trembling. He almost wanted to kill her just to end her suffering. "I don't really want Yamcha dead."

"I know." He looked at he and wanted to say something more. Instead he just grunted.

A faint smile fluttered across Bulma's lips, her fingers playing with a wayward strand of her soft blue hair. "You know what, Vegeta? You're not such a bad guy. I mean, you're still an asshole. But you can be a likeable asshole when you want to be."

"Shut up," Vegeta fought hard to try and quell the prickling heat beneath his cheeks, snapping his head to one side as Bulma rose to her feet. "Woman, I need some more armour."

"Sure thing," Bulma said. And then she was at his side, bending her face close to his and pressing a lip against one of his flaming cheeks. Vegeta tried to form a coherent sentence, tried to bite out a scathing jibe, but he could only muster an undignified splutter. He would torture her, destroy everything and everyone she ever loved for such insubordination.

Then, just as quickly as she'd arrived, she was gone. Walking towards the door, waving her hand hand as she went. egeta tried to form a coherent sentence, tried to bite out a scathing jibe, but he could only muster an undignified splutter.

"Thank you, Prince Vegeta."