Her heart is hammering in her chest, soaked in panic her fingers curl around her son's wrist like it's the only connection keeping her alive, keeping him alive. Forward, forward, forward is all her brain is screaming away from here, wherever here truly is. Because if she is honest with herself Bulma has no idea where they are. It's dark, hours before sunrise and the air is thick with smoke, the world is burning around them.

The world has been burning for quite some time. She remembers how just a few years ago she was a teenager, just shy of turning 17, sneaking onto the roof of Capsule corp every other night during warm summer nights, watching the stars - and subsequently spotting what would change her life.
An object falling to earth in a fiery spectacle of red and oranges. Always curious and never one to fear adventure she had gotten into her hover car and taken off to find it.
To find him.

In the middle of nowhere, untouched by the violence of the crash, barely older than herself - and so strikingly similar to all her humanity that for a short moment she had believed that he was just that; human. He wasn't. The name of his species alluded her to this day, his language so different than hers that the 29 days she got to spend with him were not enough time for her brilliant mind to grasp it fully. He had crash landed, knocked off course and been adamant about not leaving his pod, had not trusted her to work on it or relocate it to her father's laboratory.

Wherever he came from, whatever people he called his own, they send him a new pod and after having spent every single night of those 29 days in her company he had kissed her, climbed into the small sphere and left her with nothing but his name to remember him by - and his child.

Her parents had been furious at first, the press in an uproar, heiress to the most influential company on earth a single teen mother with a wholly absent father. Bulma had cried for weeks, had cursed her own stupidity for having unprotected sex with an alien, falling for a boy she had never had a true conversation with, a person she would never see again. A boy who had left her without so much as a second thought. In the beginning, she had believed that he would come back for her, but as the days stretched into years that hope had faded.

The girl that meet an alien boy who had listened to her ramble in a language as unfamiliar to him as his was to hers faded till it was nothing but a distant memory. A shadow of another life she could have had.

A few years after the birth of her son the androids surfaced - millions had perished. Society as she knew it had collapsed and she found herself cursing the stars each night, cursing a man that was out there, amidst the stars, unaware and uncaring of her pain and struggle. The lavish halls of Capsule Corp. became dinky underground bunkers, tasteful galas and expensive dresses turned into constantly lurking threats and worn down pieces of fabric held together by anything she could get her hands on.

There were moments of quiet - when the androids where off terrorizing a distant region of the planet - those were the moments when she would take Trunks to the surface, bask in the sun and close her eyes dreaming of days long passed. She had little to no mechanical equipment at her disposal, building make-shift lights for their small hide-away and heat in grueling cold winter nights. Her parents had died just shortly after the first months of constant fear, too old for the life on the run, the poor hygiene and medical care. She had to leave their bodies behind. There were no graves to visit, no ghost to haunt her.

It was just her and Trunks. A boy of nine - hair as lavender as her fathers but otherwise bore a striking resemblance to his father. A man lost to them among the stars. The mysterious man that had gifted him with unfathomable strength and the ability to heal quickly. Every time she looked at him she wondered distantly where Vegeta was. Who he was. And if he remembered the 16-year-old blue haired girl that had kissed him, had been mesmerized by his gravity-defying hair and sun-kissed skin.

But now even these days are over. Because this time she knows who is here. It's his people. They are falling from the sky like the wrath of Kami, in fiery spectacles saturating the air with the smell of burning Ozone, laying waste to a world already in shambles. She is running with Trunks, she doesn't know where to or even from who, just that they can't stay where they were at. Her legs are burning and her field of view is nothing but a tunnel, adrenaline is pumping in her veins in a way that overrides all logical decision making.

Away. Away. Away.

The ground shakes with an explosion and she loses her balance, the world tilts, she screams and by the time she has turned around to look for her boy she is met with the outline of a man. He is towering above her, the first rays of the rising sun contrasting his wild up-swept hair. It takes her eyes a moment to focus against the light, but she immediately understands its not him. This man is too old to have been a boy not even 10 years ago, his eyes are too hard, his hair isn't black enough.

His eyes find Trunks and Bulma launches herself off the ground. There is something feral in her mind, taking over, every sense in her body going from run run run to protect protect protect. The strange man moves without her even seeing him, her son screams as she feels a hand close around her throat and then the world goes dark.

It's the unmistakable sound of an engine that forces her to open her eyes, she is sitting, strapped into a cushy chair, hovering over what she distantly recognizes as the ruins of West City. The fog in her mind clears as her adrenaline spikes high again, panic gripping her chest so violently she is gasping for air, tearing at the straps holding her in the seat. The Pod lifts despite her protest, despite her screams of desperation, and the world zooms out as she rises. Nothing but desolation and crumbled buildings yawn before her eyes, humanities desperate struggle and ultimate loss stretching out before her like a cruel painting. And then it's gone.

Replaced instead by the view of an enormous ship hovering just outside their orbit. It's massive docking doors yawn open and the tearing pain in her chest is replaced with fury for being separated from her child. The only piece in her life that still matters. As the pod opens she can see him disappear down the bridge, being carried by a different man with dark wild hair, his screams for her echo in the large structure and she is clawing at the foreign people that take a hold of her as soon as her pod opens.

Bulma struggles, she screams and kicks as they drag her the opposite direction, her movements becoming frantic with every inch, hot tears drying on her even hotter face. Her skin is burning and her throat feels like there is glass in it every time she demands to be let go, to see her child, to know what this is all about.

The halls of the ship are white and sterile, the floors slick and polished and it isn't till the strange creatures let her go, collapsing to the ground from the sudden loss of support, that she notices the hallway is devoid of people. Footsteps are echoing faintly in the distance as everybody seems to hurry away from her.

Strands of blue obscure her view as gold tipped boots come to stand in front of her. Bulma doesn't look up. Doesn't care who it is. Doesn't understand what went so wrong in her life to be here. Without her friends, her parents, her son.

The owner of the boots crouches low, placing a small device in her field of view, it blinks once and then hums to life, displaying a 3-d holographic image of her son. There is a small scratch on his cheek but otherwise, he is sleeping soundly. Some of the tension leaves her frame and Bulma releases a breath she did not even know she was holding. Seconds tick by as she is burning the image of Trunks into her mind - asleep, whole, alive - before she raises her eyes to meet the patient stranger crouching in front of her.

It is almost like he hasn't aged. His eyes as dark and deep as she remembers them, lashes longer than any men deserves. He has filled out, his shoulders are broad, his arms thick and muscled under the dark material stretching over his skin. His hair the right shade of black - unlike the man from earlier.

Her chest constricts as her stomach drops. She has dreamed of this. Dreamed of this moment for years, imagined the joy she would feel at seeing him again, the pride at introducing him to their son. In foolish and desperate moments she had imagined he would be happy to see her as well.

His eyes drop to the image of their son, and as they find her own blue oceans again she doesn't even have to speak his language to be able to tell he believes they need to knot forming in her throat is growing by the second, her emotions riding high from joy to fury for being brought here in such a way - crashing down to endlessly tiered from having been on the run for the past years of her life. As his dark eyes study her she wonders why he came back, why now?

The hand brushing back a few strands of grimy and sweaty hair lingers before he whispers in the thick accent she remembers so vividly one of the few words she had taught him almost 10 years ago.

"Home".

Happy Birthday S.
You deserve the world.
Thank you for being my best friend.