I touched his stomach again, trying to find any source of life that could be detected.

“Kakorot… it won’t grow that fast. It’s only been a week.” He lounged around the living room watching TV.

Bulma came into the room and I quickly withdrew. “Your so lazy; both of you. Go out and mow the lawn or something.”

I didn’t even know how to mow the lawn, but she didn’t need to know that. “It’s too boring outside.” I told her, sitting back against the couch.

She glanced to Vegeta. “You haven’t trained in a long time. Are you sick or something?”

“No, woman, I’m pregnant and forgot to tell you.” He said dryly with a roll of his eyes. “Don’t you have womanly things to do? Why don’t you go make me a sandwich?”

“Screw you!” She left the room, grumbling.

I gave him a look. “You shouldn’t do that, you know.”

“Now she can’t say I didn’t tell her.” he justified and then paused. “Will you make me a sandwich?”

I recalled the last time Vegeta had made a sandwich on his own. Bulma had to hire someone to re-tile the floor and re-wallpaper the room.

He sighed. “Fine, I’ll make my own damn sandwich.” He left the room, and the remote, unguarded.

Grabbing it, I began to channel surf. It was a nice day out, but apparently the aftermath of the rut zapped all the energy from you. Now I and Vegeta both were lazy and slow. We didn’t want to do anything but lounge and eat.

On any other day, we might have been sparing, or arguing or something. But not today. Today was just too… slow.

I stopped on a channel that made me really sleepy. It was something about yoga, but the woman was boring and didn’t ketch my interest. Pretty soon, I was half asleep.

Vegeta came back and took the remote from my hand. He started to flip the channels so quickly I didn’t know how he even knew what he was watching.

I moved closer and curled up beside him. One of my hands draped over his stomach in the process.

To my surprise, he allowed this instead of pushing me away.

My head felt really heavy for some reason. And I wanted a bite of his sandwich, but I couldn’t find it with my eyes closed.

I was asleep, but I was awake at the same time. I heard the TV, but it just seemed like background noise to whatever I was dreaming.

I jerked awake suddenly, causing Vegeta to almost drop his empty plate.

“What?” He asked, annoyed.

“I was going up stairs,” I said, “And then I fell.”

“Did you fall up or down?”

“…Up.”

He nodded like that somehow proved something. He went back to watching TV.

He allowed me to push him over until he was lying on the arm of the couch. I lay my head on his chest, listening to his heart.

A moment later we heard foot steps coming down the stairs. I sat up quickly, but Vegeta didn’t move.

Trunks came around to stand in front of the TV.

“Dad,” he spoke softly.

Vegeta seemed to jump out of his own little world and join us in reality. “Huh?”

“What do I do if my stomach hurts?”

“Tell your mother. She’ll fix it.”

“But what if…” He paused to shift uncomfortably. “What if it didn’t exactly hurt, but felt weird… after I ate.”

Vegeta cocked his head at this and sat up. He beckoned for Trunks to step closer to the couch. “Is there something we need to talk about?”

Trunks shook his head. “No, not with me. But maybe… you need to talk to Goten.”

I felt a brief moment of panic, but it soon subsided. Vegeta would know what to do. Even if Goten was pregnant, there was no need for panic.

“Tell Goten to come down here.” Vegeta said, “Tell him it’s important that he talk to his father and I.”

Trunks left without a word, and soon returned with Goten.

We all left for the woods, just in case someone was watching or listening in.

Goten looked terrified. “Am I in trouble?”

“No.” I told him, but then thought better of it. “Well, if you are, then we’re all in trouble.”

Vegeta took a seat on the ground and motioned for the rest of us to join him. “Kakorot spawn number 2,” He paused. “Goten. Did you sleep with Trunks?”

I wanted to cover my ears. I didn’t want to know the details of my son’s relationships. Apparently it didn’t bother Vegeta at all to talk about it, not even when his son was involved as well.

Goten looked at me, and then his eyes casts to the ground. “Yes.” He said quietly. “But only once. And we didn’t mean to, you see-”

“I don’t care.” Vegeta interrupted, “You’re fine; Kakorot and I did the same thing.”

“Vegeta!” I cried, surprised that he would tell them this so early in the conversation.

He ignored me though. “You, my son, are a little too horny for your own good.” This was directed towards Trunks. To hear this from your own father must have been mortifying. “You’ve mated with both Kakorot spawn number 1 and 2. What do you have to say for yourself?”

For a moment, Trunks thought he was in trouble, but then he got the hint that his father was joking. “But it was fun.”

This time I did cover my ears. “Can we talk about the important part, now? Please?”

“Right, right.” Vegeta’s face became completely serious again. “Listen to me because I’m only going to explain this once. I understand that you couldn’t help it and blah, blah, blah,” It was weird hearing him say ‘Blah, blah, blah’, “But you two could have easily conceived a child.”

“Conceived a child?” Trunks asked, rewording what his father had said in his mind. “You mean Goten’s… pregnant?”

Vegeta shrugged. “I don’t know. He could be.”

“That’s impossible!” Goten argued. “Boys can’t have babies!”

“Human boys can’t, but some Saiyan boys can.” He paused to think about something. “Did you ever see the movie… uh… Jurassic-something…?”

“Jurassic Park?” I put in.

“Yeah, that. Remember when the doctors had all female dinosaurs? And then a few of them switched from female to male so they could reproduce?”

The boys nodded, a new realization coming to their eyes.

“It’s like that, only without the switching part. Saiyan males can only conceive every 15 years, though.”

“Why?” Trunks asked.

“Because there are so few female Saiyans. 1 out of 4 Saiyans are female, so there is no way that the population can reproduce fast enough with only 25 of them being female. So to compensate, every 15 years 25 of Saiyan men are able to have children.”

“So we just made the cut?” Trunks asked miserably.

Vegeta nodded. “But you have to realize, this can be very dangerous. I know you two are probably not ready to be parents just yet, but that’s just too bad. A child is a big responsibility, especially when they’re bratty and get on your nerves.” He glanced at Trunks for less than a second. “And I don’t mean to scare you, but the birth itself could kill you.”

“Kill me?” Goten gave him a look of disbelief.

“You’re young enough that the birth of a child could literally split you apart from the inside out, especially it there’s more than one. There will be blood, and it will hurt.”

Goten fell silent.

Trunks decided to change the subject. “What about you? Are one of you pregnant?”

Vegeta’s head cocked almost violently to the left.

“Can I touch it?” Trunks asked, trying to make the best of this new threat.

“Get away from me.” He said flatly.

“Come on, Vegeta; just let them touch it for a minute.”

He didn’t allow them to put their hands under his shirt, but he did left them feel his stomach for a while. There wasn’t any movement yet, but they seemed content enough to just feel it for a moment.

Trunks then touched Goten’s stomach. Nothing there either.

“Should we take him to Piccolo?” I asked.

Vegeta considered this. “No, there’s no need. We’ll be able to tell soon enough. If there isn’t a difference in two weeks, then he’s not.”

We went our separate ways, Goten and Trunks going off to talk about it more, I supposed.

We lounged around for a while longer in silence. But after so long, I had to tell him something.

“I’m going to tell Chichi. Tonight.” I said quietly, already feeling the tears burn at the back of my throat.

He rolled over to look me in the eye. “What for?”

“Maybe you don’t care if your wife hates you forever, but I do. I don’t want to tell her after everything is done and over. She’ll never trust me again.”

His head tilted, thinking. “We could get rid of it.”

“Of what?”

“The child. We could find a doctor …” He stopped to think about it some more.

Horrified that he would even think of an abortion, I recoiled. “What! Get rid of it! Just because we made a mistake doesn’t mean that it should have to suffer! This is a living thing, Vegeta! You can’t just take the easy way out and get rid of it!”

“Keep your voice down!” He hissed and pulled me back down onto the couch. “Your going to get us caught!” when I quieted he continued. “I just don’t think I can live through it if this one dies as well.” Angered, he left the room.

Guilt was a funny thing. It seems to be there even when you think you’re mad at the other person. The tears scorched the back of my throat as I thought.

Vegeta wasn’t afraid of his wife finding out and hating him. He was afraid that this child would die just like his first one. He was afraid to let this child come, even if it meant killing it himself.

That had the be the worst feeling in the world; loosing one child and then having to relive it all over again without knowing if this time would be different.

I laid down on the couch, my eyes open and unblinking, lost in thought.

It was my fault that he had to relive this nightmare. It was my fault we were in this mess now.

But then another thought came to me. Goten was only 15. He was still a baby and there was the possibility that he could have a baby himself. There was also a possibility that the child would die.

And even if Goten didn’t die along with it, what kind of person would he become afterwards? Would he become bitter and depressed, like Vegeta? Or just spiral downwards until we find him hanging in a closet with a belt looped around his neck?

Could the death of his first child be the reason why Vegeta was so mad all the time, why he could never seem to vent his stress? Or was there something deeper to him that he wasn’t willing to tell anyone about?

About an hour later, I went to find him, thinking he would be cooled down by then. I found him outside, in a tree. I came to know it as his ‘thinking tree’, for whenever he was troubled by something, he could always be found in this tree, lying between the highest branches.

I didn’t know how he got up there without breaking the limbs; the tree was pretty old; but he did.

I knew if I tried to climb up there with him, the branches would snap and I would probably break my neck. And plus, this was Vegeta’s tree, on one was aloud up there besides him anyway.

“Vegeta,” I called up to him, not needing to raise my voice. “Come down. I need to talk to you.”

“Go away.” He crossed his arms and rolled over so his back was towards me. I couldn’t help but notice and admire the slight curve his ribs and hips made in contrast to his waist.

“I didn’t mean to upset you. Just come down and we’ll talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk. I want you to leave me alone.”

I guess my theory of his being cooled down was wrong. He was one of those people that held grudges for a long time; sometimes years at a time.

I circled the tree until I could see his face again. “I know you’re scared, and you don’t want to risk loosing this one, but I can’t let you kill it. Just think about it; if you get an abortion, then you’ll have to spend the rest of your life never knowing if that one would have made it. Never know what kind of person it would have become. Do you see?”

“Kakorot,” His voice was on the verge of breaking. “You don’t seem to get it. There was no such thing as abortions when I was young. They had never been heard of, or even thought of. If I’d had the option back then, I would have terminated that one as well.”

“No you wouldn’t have. You would have had it and let it die in your arms even if you knew it didn’t stand a chance. You loved it. Just like you love Trunks, and just like you’re going to love this one too. You won’t kill it; you can’t bring yourself to do it.”

That statement must have terrified him, but someone had to make him see. He seemed so put together when it came to this rut business, but in actuality, he was the most insecure of all of us.

He came down and embraced me, crushing himself against me, fearing to let go. He might have been crying, but he made no sound and would not let me look at his face.

“I’m tired, Kakorot.” He said, and then eventually, “I’m…afraid.”

“I know. But you don’t have to do it alone, you know.” I paused. “I’m going to tell Chichi. Do you want me to tell Bulma too?”

He shook his head but did not pull away from my chest. “I’ll tell her.”