Chapter Four

Sorry it's been so long peeps. My comp was offline for a while. Enjoy.

The next chapter probably won't be out till after the new year, coz I'm (fichan) going on hols for JChristmasJ, and sin is so busy writing her other fics that she can't be bothered to write this one.

Bulma was still wondering how to achieve her goal of time travel as she made lunch for Vegeta and Goku. They were really battling it out in there. Vegeta must have been stressed after her blatant ridicule of his recent terror at night and was apparently taking it out on Goku.

She ran through the options that she had available to her in her mind. She couldn't think of any realistic ways of jumping through time the way she needed to.

She finished lunch and decided to call the boys in. She put the HUGE meal on the table and then pressed a large red button, not unlike a fire alarm. After a second, two screams were heard as the door to the gravity room was flung open and the two Saiyans came running out as fast as they could, their hands over their ears.

The button was, Bulma thought, one of her better inventions. It caused a very loud, extremely high-pitched noise to be heard throughout Capsule Corps. It was an efficient way of keeping a modicum of control over the aggressive Saiyan Prince. Goku and Vegeta came stumbling out of the gravity room, but Bulma did not take her hand of the buzzer until they were both in the kitchen.

Vegeta glowered. "What the HFIL do you think you were doing woman? You could've burst our eardrums."

Bulma's reply was to smile pleasantly and tell them to eat the banquet-sized lunch she had made. Halfway through, Bulma had remembered something Yamcha had said about the Room of Space and Time. She made a mental note to ask Goku about it later.

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After lunch Goku and Vegeta trained some more and were currently in the process of finishing off Bulma's third attempt that day to make something that was the least bit edible. Vegeta ate little for a Saiyan and left before Goku had even begun to make a reasonable start on the food. He decided he couldn't be bothered to wait for Goku and went off to train on his own till he had finished.

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He hadn't been hungry. This was stupid! He had to snap out of it. He had been thinking about killing himself for crying out loud! And starving himself wouldn't help either. He started performing a vigorous kata in the hopes of stopping himself from thinking. It wasn't working. It hadn't been something he could help, though. He had felt that if he ate more than he had he would've been sick. He also felt incredibly weary. He stopped the kata in mid-air and sat down heavily, holding his head in his hands as he sighed. What was wrong with him? Could it be the woman? She had been tainting his thoughts for a while now. He hated her. What right had she to come into his room and see him as he was re-living one of the worst times of his life in his own head?

She had had no right, to come in, to pretend to be someone she was not, someone who had hurt him in the past. She had no right to worm information out of him like that, when he was asleep and vulnerable, no right to make him re-live more than he had wanted to, no right to hold him as he had wept his sorrows in his past, in his present, simultaneously. Wait a minute. Why was he thinking of that? He had not wanted the comfort she had not offered, but forced on him, but it had been welcome. A minute of security. He remembered that as well. He didn't want it for a reason. 'These things are addictive,' he had been taught. 'What is the point of wanting something you cannot have? No one here will give it to you. You are no longer a child, you are not even a regular person. You are one of Master Frieza's destroyers, do you understand? You give pain, you destroy things built. You cannot be soft. Life is tumultuous, you could be dead tomorrow, you may have to kill the one you are addicted to, and what if you can't? You would be a liability, and we can't afford liabilities. If you want to survive, chibi Ouji, you will have to stop these feelings, resist all advances, you must never be caught off guard.'

The soldier had been right. To allow himself such 'liabilities' would be dangerous. She had ridiculed him for his crying afterwards, she had most probably been pretending to care, as Nappa had used to do. He had deserved it. He had let his guard down and that had been the punishment. He expected nothing else.

* Then why does it hurt so much? * A small voice inside him mourned. He shook his head. It didn't hurt. How could it? There had been nothing there to hurt in the first place.

"Where the HFIL is Kakkarott?" he asked himself, and he got up and walked towards the kitchen, pointedly ignoring the wailing that carried on in his head.

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Once Vegeta had gone, Bulma turned to Goku and started quizzing him about the Room of Spirit and Time. After two or three hours of this, Goku got a confused expression on his face. He had told Bulma everything he knew about the Room of Spirit and Time at least three times over by now and he still wanted to know more. It was time for him to ask a question.

"Bulma?" he questioned. "Why do you suddenly want to know about the Room of Spirit and Time?"

Bulma looked at him and blinked slowly. He had interrupted her mid-question and it also hadn't occurred to her that Goku might want to know why she was quizzing him.

"Well…I…uh…um…" she stuttered. Goku looked at her expectantly. She swallowed. "Um, well…" she licked her lips nervously. "You see, Vegeta's been having really bad nightmares lately, and I want to know what they're about. He keeps talking about Frieza and Zarbon, so I think it has something to do with his past or how Frieza raised him and I want to find out more."

"So you want to use the Room of Spirit and Time…to go back to when Vegeta was a chibi…to see why he has these nightmares?" Goku asked. Bulma nodded. "I think it would be better, if you talked to Kami about this. It's his room and he probably knows more about it than I do."

At this point, Vegeta came storming in, yelling. "What the HFIL are you doing, Kakkarott? You've been in here for over three hours."

Goku just smiled appeasingly at him, shot a look at Bulma and went back to training.

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Bulma lay in bed, thinking about what Goku had said. She knew that if she went into the Room of Space and Time, she could lose years of her life. * I wonder if there's a way round that? * She thought. She had been thinking over her idea for over a week now. Was she really willing to lose years of her life for Vegeta? Surprisingly, the answer that came naturally to her was yes. She didn't know if she would do it for Yamcha, yet she was ready and willing to risk everything for Vegeta. It scared her.

"Well, girl," she thought. "If you're going to something you'd better do it soon, because he's getting worse day by day." As if on cue, the whimpers that signalled the beginning of her guest's nightly hell started up, punctuated by muffled murmuring and screams. Her ears had become tuned to the sound, and so she got up and went to his room, as she had done for the past few nights. He was lying face down on the pillow, so she quickly flipped him over so that he wouldn't suffocate. She sat down on his bed and wiped away the tears that had wet his face. His face was red from lying face down and she kissed it tenderly. She stroked his hair and spoke softly to him.

She hadn't allowed herself to fall asleep in his room after that first night. He already thought that she considered his nightly torture a weakness, and for him to see her asleep the next morning as he had on the first night would only send him back further into his too tight circle of isolation. She wished she could put her own pride aside and apologise for that, but she just couldn't. In this way she could relate to Vegeta.

After a while, he had settled to hiccups. He looked at her with unseeing eyes and spoke. "Buruma?" He had started calling her this a few nights ago in his sleep and while she had no idea who this person was, she was glad that there had been someone in his life who had offered him just a little bit of comfort. "You-you shouldn't be here. He was strangling…"

"Hush Vegeta, shhh." She whispered. He clung onto her in a tight hug, like a chibi, and softly cried himself to sleep. She hadn't noticed he had started crying again.

Bulma looked down at him, noting the tear-tracked face, the swollen eyes and the look of total and utter exhaustion and sighed. She had to put her fears about what she was feeling aside. Vegeta needed her. And, although she didn't know why, she had to do this. She didn't want to be another person who had let him down. She set Vegeta back down on the bed and entered her own room. She changed into an outfit identical to the one she wore on Namek, packed a small bag of things. It consisted of a change of clothes, her over night things and a container of capsules holding every type of capsule she would need and even some she didn't, as well as some empty ones. She then went outside, popped open an air car and took off for Kami's lookout.

That's all for now evil ones (and the few good ones rare as you may be). Sympathise with me for a minute people… Fichan is going to Tenerife for Crimbo 8 (

I'm gonna be so lonely. Oh well. See ya soon.