AN: Aaaand that was a really long break between chapters. I apologize – I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out what I wanted to do with this chapter. There will be one more chapter/epilogue, but I can't make any promises as to when that will be.

Lost But Found

Chapter 16: Not All Who Wander

She had spent the last hour just staring at the device. All of her effort, her struggles and frustration, gone into making this thing, and now that it was done - really, finally truly done - she was too chicken shit to use it.

The idea of what type of future waited for her was scary. Not the facing her parents when they were angry kind of scary, or even fighting for her life scary. This was like taking a deep breath for a dive and not knowing if you'd have enough air to make it where you needed to. What would the world be on the other side of forty years?

Would she still have a place in it?

In the end, it wasn't fear of the future that made her get to her feet. It was instead how painful the idea of staying in this time.

Bra packed together what little she had into her backpack. Tidied up what she could in the lab. Took five deep breaths to calm herself down, as little good as they did her. But she was focused again. Ready to move forward.

Before she pulled the trigger, she placed a small timer on the work station. She couldn't explain why she was doing this, but on a whim she'd built the damn thing and painstakingly set the years, months, and days. She'd even gone so far as to figure out the hours and minutes. And just to fuck with them, she'd thrown in a few seconds.

When her parents came to look for her, as she assumed they'd have to eventually, she had no idea what they would think or feel knowing she was gone. Knowing this timer, already counting down, was all she'd left behind. Would they look forward to seeing her again? And would it be in forty years when she showed up in the year she knew, or would they see her when she was born in ten years?

The last thing she remembered seeing was the timer ticking down the years.

Maybe she was a coward.

"Home" had been her guiding star the last few weeks. Now it was the only place she wouldn't go. But as she saw it, with the whole expanse of human history at her fingertips, who was she to resist the temptation?

On her first trip, an ancient Greek town mistook her for a goddess. She had no reason to correct them.

She walked the plains of North America before any other human had the chance, losing track of how many buffalo she saw before she could count past five hundred.

She had an affair with a French prince - handsome and gentile and completely taken with her. He'd proposed to her and she'd felt bad for laughing in his face. He'd blushed, indignant, and said he could have made her a princess. A gentle pat on the shoulder as she explained she already was.

Einstein's ideas on relativity were much more eloquent when she heard them in person. She resisted asking him on his theories of time travel.

Simply because it would make Trunks jealous, she saw every Star Wars movie on opening night. She decided to save the ticket stubs for him.

Back and forth, she visited every moment in history that called to her. Sometimes she was tempted to interfere, to save a stranded family as Vesuvius erupted around them or to warn a young woman not to board the Titanic. But she always stopped herself, acting in ways she felt wouldn't change the world too much.

When she grew homesick, she jumped forward. Curiosity brought her to her mother's childhood. It was heartwarming to see the bond between her and Goku grow, though she could hardly believe that the scrawny kid with the wild hair would become the most powerful person alive.

A darker desire to see her father as he had been brought her to when he first landed on Earth. She kept her ki low and just watched. Even now, she wasn't sure how she felt about it. The only opinion she could commit to was wondering how her mother could have ever seen through this man to the better man beneath.

In a café in West City, she sipped on her latte while Mirai Trunks tried not to stare. They compared notes on being Briefs children displaced in time. It was hardly a surprise the shared grievances they had about their father, though this Trunks had no basis for comparison. He sympathized with her loss, she with his, but the silence that eventually settled over them was uncomfortable. She couldn't become his sister after one meal, and he couldn't replace the brother she'd known thirty years.

She hugged him good-bye and wished him luck in his time as she decided it was time to head back to hers.

All in all, she figured she was gone a solid year when she rematerialized outside the compound. The sun was setting – or rising, she couldn't really tell – as she walked into the house.

"You're late."

Her body immediately tensed at the sound of his gruff voice. As if caught doing something bad, she slowly met Vegeta's eyes.

Now this man, this man she knew. Hair the way it'd been since she was young. Clothes that were much more familiar to her. Eyes that not only recognized her but held so much suppressed emotion that it was endearing and comforting.

"I would've been here earlier if someone hadn't interfered." It had been intended as a joke, but it came out harsher than she meant it to. Yet she found she didn't regret being rude - it might be be forty years for him since it all happened, but the sting of her father's rejection was still relatively fresh in her mind.

She got barely more than a hmmph before the next accusation. "You lied."

"About what...?"

He threw something at her too fast for her to see what it was. She caught it out of the air on reflex, but when she finally got a look at it, she couldn't help the lop-sided smile. "Did it really go off on my birthday?" she asked, absentmindedly tossing the timer back and forth between her hands.

"Yes," Vegeta replied sharply. "When you turned five."

This time she laughed at the look on his face. Annoyed as he obviously was, this conversation brought a sense of comfort and familiarity.

"I fail to see what is so funny, girl." Even without seeing him in a while, she could tell he was at least in part amused. "You said you were five years younger than you are. You were… earlier than we expected."

She'd left the timer as a reminder of where she came from. It had counted down 15 years, 4 months, 3 days, 10 hours and 11 minutes from the moment she started it. She knew when her parents found it, they'd think it was set to go off on the day she was born. And it did. But as her own form of insurance, she'd had it go off five years too late.

She crossed her arms, mirroring him except for the slight smirk on her face. "Well, I was under the impression that every Saiyan born on this planet had been a complete accident. Why should I be any different?"

He raised an eyebrow at that.

"What? Oh c'mon, Gohan was too. Chichi might have known what she was doing but there's no way Goku would've been able to connect the dots." Having seen him as a child had in her eyes confirmed this long held belief.

There was amusement in his eyes and she could tell he wanted to add something to this, but he pointed a finger at her accusingly. "Do not change the subject."

Her shoulders slumped slightly under his scrutiny. "What did you want me to do? Announce my potential birth for the whole world? I wanted you guys to know I was still a possibility, but not have you guys… I don't know, freak out or something as it got closer and closer to zero. I figured if it went off after I was born…" She shrugged. "Besides, it's not like I said I'd be born when the timer went off."

"You knew the assumptions we'd make." Her smile was teasing, but he kept his tone serious. "You nearly gave your mother a heart attack when she found out she was having you."

"Well, you nearly killed me, so I feel like we should call it a wash."

His eyed narrowed slightly. She thought he might keep scolding her, but instead he merely commented, "You're older." It was half accusation, half question.

"You can't possibly remember what I looked like thirty years ago," she said dismissively, but all the same she turned away and pretended to go through the fridge, hoping to obscure his view of her.

"I may have seen you thirty years ago and I also saw you last bloody week, girl. Do not take me for a fool."

Oh, right. Crap.

She ran a hand through her hair before sighing. "Look, I had some stuff on my plate. I didn't want to try coming back here until I had sorted through it." Until I could handle what might be here.

"So you went gallivanting throughout the timeline instead of coming home?"

It's not until she reads the underlying annoyance in his voice that it hits her.

Her mouth started to drop open in disbelief but she caught herself. "You... you knew the entire time. My whole life you knew and you didn't even tell me!"

"I trained you your whole life specifically for that fight."

"Ugh!" She threw her hands up in annoyance. All that work to avoid them and apparently things ended up the same regardless.

Her father just shrugged, almost smug. "You wanted to still be born, I don't see why you would be upset that you were."

"I spent weeks freaking out about that when all it would've taken is you or Mom or like… I don't know… anyone leaving me some sort of clue that, 'Hey, if you ever end up in the past, don't freak out too much because you're totally going to be fine and still be born and and and…'" She was aware that her arms had been waving around with increasing energy and as she abruptly ran out of energy, she found she could barely breathe. Instead she just let the rest of her annoyance out with a huff as she collapsed into the closest chair. "Seriously, though," she said, rubbing at the migraine building in her left temple, "A head's up would have been nice."

"And missed that wonderful speech?" She glared at him but found his returning smile barely mocking. "Princess, if you'd known things would be okay, would you have taken all the precautions you did?"

Bra considered a moment. "No, I guess not..."

"Then do not be upset that we took our own. You're not the only one who wanted to make sure you were born."

Silence reigned as they both brooded over what the other had said. All in all, she wasn't terribly surprised when her father turned to leave first. "Your brother will want to see you. We may have neglected to inform him where you've been the last week."

"Needlessly cruel," she muttered. "I'm seeing a trend."

Vegeta was nearly out of the kitchen when she decided this was the most likely chance she'd ever have to get a straight answer from him. Before he could walk away, she called out. "Daddy?"

"Yes, Princess?"

"Why did you decide to stay?"

He hesitated long enough she thought he wouldn't answer at all. "I used to dread the very notion of having children. I'd been used as a child against my father, and because of my father's weakness…" He trailed off, eyes lost to a world Bra was sure she didn't want to understand. When they cleared and met hers, he seemed in control. "My son killed Frieza and my daughter killed an alien with a higher ki than her own." He shrugged. "I figured if that fear was meaningless, perhaps the others were too."