Chapter 11: Close

Bulma had just opened the passenger side door for her ride to work when she spotted Vegeta across the street, staring out over the water.

"Hold on a minute, Zarbon." She threw her purse down on the seat with force and slipped her feet back into her heels before striding over the road with visible ferocity.

"Hey!" she shouted. "Hey!" Before Vegeta could respond she was in his face, shoving at his chest with both hands. He looked too surprised to be angry, as though he could possibly fail to understand why she was furious with him.

"How dare you," she snarled, close to his face.

"How dare I?" He sounded the same as ever – aloof, slightly annoyed – and that only made her angrier. Her face felt hot, and her whole body along with it. She was almost at the point of tears and his stubborn refusal to own what he'd done was stoking the flames. She didn't even care that she was standing in the middle of the footpath where anyone could see her lose her shit – let them see. Let them know that the man they were doomed to have as a leader one day was, for lack of a better word right now, a complete and utter dick.

"I know you went through my things, arsehole. Are you happy now? Did you find everything you wanted?" She slapped her palms against his shoulders again and he took hold of her wrists, more gently than he had done in the past but without any suggestion of yielding.

"Even assuming I would stoop to illegally searching your personal belongings, what makes you think I wouldn't confront you with whatever I found?"

There was nothing special about the way he said it, but Bulma couldn't deny the seed of truth in his question. He'd confronted her face to face with his suspicions before, and if he'd found enough to know who she really was he'd surely want to prove he was some great detective. Whether that would be by trying to protect her or by outing her to international authorities she didn't know, but it wouldn't involve keeping it entirely to himself.

"But…" If not Vegeta or Chichi (and she couldn't imagine Goku), then who? "Someone did," she said in a small voice. It began to dawn on her that an overzealous cop had been the good option.

"This close I can see that under the mascara your eyelashes are blue," he said, out of nowhere. She jerked away and he released her wrists automatically.

"If I reached out to London or Tokyo for a photo of Bulma Briefs – something better than the one on the news – would she look a lot like you?"

Bulma shook her head silently.

"Pretty shit pseudonym if that's you."

"Pretty great one if it's not."

"I already know you have the blue eyes, too. Why don't you—"

"Bulma?" Zarbon was out of the car, standing a few feet away with his phone out. He looked as well-composed as ever but there was concern in his eyes. "Is everything okay?"

"Yes," she said, a little too fast. "Sorry, we're friends. I needed to give some news. Exciting news. All fired up, you know."

"You seemed a little… up close and personal." Bulma assumed he knew who Vegeta was, if he wasn't willing to put a name to behaviours like the man grabbing at her.

"Yes, we're close." Without thinking too much about it she leant in and grazed her lips across Vegeta's cheek, whispering "please, don't do anything that can be traced."

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," she tittered at Zarbon who looked either placated or disappointed, it was hard to tell with him. Bulma followed him back to his car without looking back and tried not to think about anything.

Chichi made roast peppers and the three of them sat in the living space watching the outsized television as they ate.

"Oh, Goku," she said with a little sigh. "Those phone calls have started up again."

"Really? That's pretty weird, usually they at least switch their target after I talk to them. I guess they're all hot-headed with the swim so close. I'll get Vegeta to chat with them, he's way scarier than me."

They watched the people on the television cook in high definition for a while, then Goku added, "he's got a girlfriend, you know."

"Who?" Chichi asked.

"Vegeta."

"He does not."

"He does. He had lipstick on his cheek today."

Bulma chewed her pepper thoughtfully. She considered explaining that it was probably hers from their morning argument, but she wasn't feeling particularly charitable towards him right now. Let them gossip, she decided.

"He hasn't had a girlfriend since that American girl, has he?"

"I can't believe he ever had a girlfriend," Bulma scoffed.

"Oh, yeah," Goku nodded enthusiastically. "I think he dated her for three years while he was in America, and they did long-distance for like eighteen months but…" he shrugged.

"Long-distance never works," Chichi said. "I assume she cheated on him because that's how long-distance always ends. Always."

"I don't know about that, Chichi, but I think she found something that was, I don't know." He shrugged.

"Easier," Bulma said. "There's always something easier waiting when you're doing long-distance." She ate some more of her pepper and thought about how easily Yamcha was fading from her own mind. "So, what, like he's just been broken-hearted since then? I find that hard to believe."

"Aw, no. I mean, I think he's had things with tourists in the summer. He's just hard to get to know, I guess."

Chichi patted her boyfriend on the arm. "I think he just only has two settings. Either it means nothing, or it means everything. He gets too weirdly intense and obsessive about everything so it's natural women would be the same. He probably would have married that American girl in the first year if he hadn't known coming back here was looming." She gave Goku a meaningful look and Bulma felt the real topic of conversation shift.

"No way, Chi. Nobody gets married that fast these days."

"Some people believe that when you know, you just know."

Bulma leant back in her chair and settled in to watch the people on tv bicker and listen to Goku and Chichi talk past one another for the next half hour. In these moments, at least, she could turn off her mind and this life began to feel normal.

The first thing Bulma did each morning at the lab, before she even put her purse away under her desk, was check her emails. Although she was only clerical staff and marine biology was far from her former field, the emails that came in from other scientists made her feel connected to her old life. There were certain foibles all scientists seemed to share, and she loved seeing them in black and white on the screen.

Today, among the usual, was an email simply titled 'Bulma', from a gmail address with a string of numbers as the username. It was probably spam, but with the idiosyncratic email etiquette of some of the lab's frequent correspondents, she was duty-bound to check it out.

The body of the message was one simple sentence.

'The truth will out.'

Everything stopped. Her heart, her breath, her mind, everything was still.

"Bulma?"

The voice came from far away, or maybe underwater, and at first she ignored it. Then it was joined by another one and a hand on her back and she resurfaced.

"Bulma? You look a little sick."

Two of the lab employees were standing over her looking concerned.

"I'm fine," she said unconvincingly.

"Just go home if you're sick," Dodoria called out from across the room, elbow-deep in a tank. "You're hardly essential lab personnel."

"I'm fine," she said again, fuelled by her irritation at the ever-annoying Dodoria, and recovered her faculties enough to face up to her monitor.

"I'll drive you home," Zarbon offered.

"I'm fine," she said and deleted the email. "Honestly, I'd rather be here than on my own. I promise I'll let you know if there's anything you need to worry about."

Zarbon looked at her with an expression of pretty concern. "You promise?"

"I promise."