A/N: I don't own DBZ or the characters, that honour belongs to Akira Toriyama. I use British English spelling.

It had been two weeks since the battle with Cell. Two weeks since her son from the future had left for his own time. Two weeks since her best friend had died and refused to be resurrected.

Bulma didn't have a lot of experience with death. With the dragon balls, nothing seemed permanent. Even when Yamcha died, after a brief moment grief, her thoughts had gone immediately to how she was going to bring him back. Accepting the inevitability of death was something she'd never had to do before.

How long was she supposed to feel like this?

Bulma stepped out of the back door to her lab and gulped in the afternoon's fresh spring air, hoping it would relieve the feeling of claustrophobia she'd had for the last fortnight. Her heart was a crushing weight in her chest, and even if she forgot for a moment that she'd never see Goku again, it soon came crashing back, falling upon her in waves that left her drowning.

She'd thrown herself back into her work in an attempt to forget it all, but nothing seemed to help. Kami she needed a cigarette. Bulma clenched her hands so hard her nails dug into her palms. She'd given up for the sake of her son, but she was almost regretting that decision now.

Deciding that the chance of her achieving anything worthwhile in the lab for now was minimal, Bulma decided to head back to the main house. The walk took her past her mother's butterfly garden, and instead of going straight home where she'd likely have her boisterous one year old thrown into her arms the moment she walked in, she ducked into the enclosure in the hopes of dragging out the short lived peace and quiet she'd likely get.

She slipped inside, carefully shutting the glass door behind her, and let the humid heat envelop her. The enclosure was large, and filled with tropical plants of varying shapes and sizes. Hundreds of butterflies swooped through the air in a delightful rainbow of colour and she found the corners of her mouth curling up as she began to wander slowly through the sanctuary.

Her smile dropped the moment she heard a crunching footstep behind her. Damnit, couldn't she get five minutes of peace?

She swung around, expecting to see a gardener, or perhaps even her mother who loved this spot, but to her complete shock, it was Vegeta.

He wore a tight, forest green t-shirt and cream chinos, and had one hand shoved into a pocket, the other reaching out and touching the leaf of a plant. Vegeta wore human clothing so rarely that it was always a shock to see him in them. The t-shirt clung delectably to his arm muscles, and even with the lack of armour anyone would have known he was a warrior.

Bulma felt a familiar pang in her gut as his dark gaze moved from the fauna to her. Ugh, he was always so damn sexy, his one look rekindling feelings she'd shoved down after their brief but stormy liaison had ended.

He said nothing, and kept watching her, his unblinking, stony eyes giving away nothing. But there was something different about him - she couldn't quite put her finger on what though. The faint bruising around his eyes suggested a lack of sleep, and while he still held himself tall for someone so naturally lacking in height, he no longer had the same rigidness in his stance.

With a jolt of unexpected guilt, she realised that she hadn't thought about the father of her child once since Trunks had returned to his own time. She'd been too wrapped up in her grief to care about what the man who had vowed to kill Goku was up to. She'd assumed he would leave Earth eventually - he'd never given her any indication that he wanted to be a part of his son's life, and he'd made his feelings for her perfectly clear when he left for space to train, leaving her pregnant and afraid.

"What do you want?" Bulma asked, unable to keep the acid out of her tone. "I came here to be alone, you know. And if you destroy this garden my mother will kill you."

Before Cell, Vegeta would have snarled a reply, spitting back as much venom as her. But he didn't so much as twitch an eye muscle, continuing to look at her intently.

"I believe I was here first," he replied, sounding suspiciously reasonable.

Bulma stepped forward with a frown. "This doesn't seem like your kind of place. You know, filled with life instead of death."

Something flashed across the man's face, and if she didn't know him better, she'd have thought he was hurt by her words. "I came to watch," he said quietly, turning back to the plant his hand was still outstretched towards.

"Watch what?" Bulma asked, but even as she said the words she spotted the chrysalis hanging from a small branch and moved forward to join him.

The bottom of the pupa had already cracked, and the orange butterfly inside had begun to push it open with its head, wriggling around and slowly widening the gap. Bulma's breath caught as the pupa opened completely and the insect fell out, only to catch itself with its feet on the now empty chrysalis. It hung upside down, its folded wings slowly unfurling.

"There are many creatures in the universe who metamorphose into another form." Vegeta squinted at the insect, scrunching his nose. "But I have never seen one so fragile."

"It isn't a form made for fighting," Bulma said, leaning forward to inspect the black markings on the wings.

"What is the point of it then?"

Bulma smothered a grin. "It's for breeding."

Vegeta raised an eyebrow at that, his lips curving into a smirk. "Well, there are creatures I've seen with that talent."

"Oh? Any that you have personal experience with?" Bulma nudged his arm with her elbow, throwing him a wink.

Vegeta rolled his eyes with a snort. "Hm. There was this blue-haired banshee who could change from screaming insults to screaming my name in ten seconds. Quite a feat to see."

Bulma let out a gasp of mock horror and slapped his arm. "Asshole!"

"Bitch," he retorted, but the small chuckle that bubbled from his throat afterwards gave him away, and Bulma couldn't help let out a small laugh herself.

The butterfly in front of them began to move its wings a little, beating them slowly back and forth as they continued to unfurl.

"How does it know what to do?" Vegeta asked, his eyes pinching together.

Bulma shrugged. "Nature I guess. Like how some animals are born knowing how to swim."

A hushed silence fell upon them for a while until Vegeta opened and shut his mouth a few times and Bulma realised he was trying to find the right words. She wondered he was going to talk about Goku, and that irritating guilty sensation returned. Vegeta was now the last full blooded Saiyan. That had to be hard to wrap his head around.

But when he finally spoke, it wasn't what she'd expected.

"When Frieza…" Vegeta clenched his fists and glared at the butterfly before them. "When I died, I…"

Bulma realised he'd never once spoken of that experience to her. She knew about it thanks to Krillen, but it all seemed so surreal when standing next to a man like Vegeta whose very cells radiated with life.

He turned away from the insect, towards her. "When I died, I came back changed." He reached out his hand and to Bulma's surprise, he captured a butterfly that must have landed on her hair, then held it in the palm of his hand. "Although, unlike this odd creature, it was not in outward appearances and I did not know what was different. I did not know what to do."

Bulma nodded, keeping her mouth shut in case he stopped talking. This was probably the most words he'd spoken to her outside of an argument ever.

"This insect is different, but it knows what it now needs to do." He drew his gaze up from the butterfly to her. "When I died, I knew I was different, but did not know what had changed…" He trailed off, remaining silent as he moved his palm to a leaf and placed the butterfly on it in an uncharacteristically gentle movement.

They stood there, side by side, watching the butterfly silently. Bulma could feel the heat of Vegeta's arm next to her - they were so close that if she nudged a few millimetres to the right she'd have been pressing up against him. All of the grief she'd been feeling, all of the anger and sorrow and loneliness washed out of her and she suddenly felt exhausted.

"Then I saw Trunks die." He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, Bulma saw that they were not cold and hard as she had always thought they were. No, the depths of them held the same grief as hers probably did. "He died," Vegeta choked out. "He died in front of me and… and I…"

"You changed again," Bulma finished for him, beginning to understand, for somehow a man who she'd thought incapable of displaying normal emotions had put into words how she felt herself.

"Yes." Vegeta sighed, a sound of pure weariness leaking from his lungs. "But I still don't know what to do."

"Neither do I," Bulma admitted softly. And she finally let herself lean against him, feeling the warm press of his body against hers as he stiffened and then relaxed against her. "Perhaps we could figure it out together."

I found this in my unpublished folder. I think I wrote it about a year ago when I was feeling particularly melancholy. Anyway, I dusted it off, gave it an edit, and voilà! Let me know what you think!