Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Darker than Ebony ❯ Red as a Newborn ( Chapter 4 )

Red as a Newborn

Disclaimer: Dragonball Z isn't mine. Neither is the song called "Promises" by Eve 6. There is a line in it in which they say "red as a newborn…" and I thought that it fit. As in it's a color song line without giving away the gender of the baby!

Dedication: This is for you SMDSP. *T-rex eyes* What was this about me not being allowed to write yaoi involving Vegeta? I'll have you become a raving yaoi fan yet! You addicted yet?

Warnings: Lemon, pretty much PWP, and slightly TWT (set during Saiyaman Saga but no World Martial Arts tournament and no Goku or Buu). And there are cliques but let's just have fun with them, all right?

A/N: There was never supposed to be another part to "Darker than Ebony" but my muse had other plans. And my muse is still Renegade Phoenix. You know, if she didn't bug me daily about writing, I'd never get anything done. I told her that I'd probably take a few days to get this out but I think I'll be done early just for her…and all the rest of my loyal fans! (All two of you…*snickers*) Oh, it's Gohan's turn in this chapter. Has anyone ever noticed that when I write in the first person, I tend to switch back and forth between the characters?

Waiting seems to be my worst task I've ever had. The waiting those months for our baby to be born seem simple right now. Ok, maybe not simple, because when Vegeta is miserable, everyone else is miserable. It's kind of funny right now how things were during those months. At first I was inconsolable about my mother's actions and words towards me. Then it slowly faded as I came to realize that I had other things to worry about than my loss. I was gaining a family now. That was something that I had never really planned on but it was happening anyways.

When I first realized that Vegeta was pregnant, I didn't know what to think. It all seemed a little too surreal. I mean, we're both male for Kami's sake! Of course, I did not take into consideration that we were both Saiyan males. I guess there are a lot of things that I need to learn about being Saiyan. And then thanks to those months with my mate, I am now learning just what it is to be a Saiyan.

It took until a few weeks before the birth for the reality to sink in more. Vegeta being sick and weak, his growing abdomen, and all the sleepless nights of false alarms were not the whole of the situation. Those were just the precursors to my becoming a father of an infant. I am now someone's mate and someone's father. I actually had to sit down and cry when that thought finally hit me. Of course, according to the aforementioned mate, I cry too much. What does he know; I think I'm taking everything fairly well. I mean, if you shoved this situation on a normal human I think that he would probably have to be admitted to a mental institution. Heh, too bad I'm not normal or entirely human.

Thankfully at that time, Bulma was a doll! She took me in and allowed me to stay with Vegeta. She about pissed herself when we had to explain to her what was going on. We choose to sit at the kitchen table and face her like the men we were. That meant that after we confessed that my little extracurricular activities had lead to unexpected consequences, we got the lecture of a lifetime like we were little kids. That is after she picked herself up off the floor and quit laughing. She stood and paced in front of us telling us of how we should have been more careful if we knew that it could happen. That part of the speech was aimed at the one who did know prior to it happening.

My part of the lecture was more of how I should take responsibility for my actions. Sometimes I think Bulma has too much fun acting like my mother. She started ranting about that even though I was still really young and in high school, I had to be an adult now. I would have a family to take care of. She also asked me if I had ever heard of a condom in my health classes. I think she just said that to get us to blush - and it worked. Luckily after that comment, she switched modes and started squealing about how cute the baby was going to be.

Now, I didn't let her give me a free ride. I tried to pay for my room and board but seeing as I had no money, I had to repay her by working. I helped around the house and did yard work for her. I also started helping her in her lab. She may be a genius but her lab looks like a lunatic threw a party in it. I spent time everyday trying to organize it so she could finally find things she thought that she had lost. I could work at that task everyday for the rest of my life and never finish!

When I was not at school or working for Bulma, I spent my time with my mate. Vegeta was very cranky since he couldn't do his normal activities anymore. He usually spent most of his day in the Gravity Chamber training but at first he was too sick to train and then his gravid form was too cumbersome to even think about working out. So I tried to occupy him with other things. That was not an easy task.

It started out that I would just tell him about my day and try to get him to engage in a conversation. That usually did not work seeing as he was not very talkative and his perpetual cranky mood. After a while he just told me to shut my trap and quit talking his ear off. That lasted a whole five minutes though - for some reason, I find silence very unnerving. Although, I that time I spoke, I found a topic that I could get Vegeta to actually speak about. Just out of curiosity, I asked him something that had been bothering me since I found out about his pregnancy.

"When the baby is born, I know that I'm its father, but what exactly are you? You're its mother in the sense that you are the one carrying it but doesn't mother usually denote the female parent?"
He turned to look at me as if he were analyzing me before he responded. "How much of the Saiyan language do you know?"

"None, actually," I said will furrowing my brow. "But what does that have to do with what I asked?"

"Everything. There are no words in your Earth language for many things in Saiyan culture."

"So males being pregnant and giving birth was a common enough occurrence that they had their own word?" I asked trying to encourage him to talk and trying to satisfy my curiosity.

"Stupid humans always dividing things by gender." He growled half-heartedly and shook his head. "Gender was basically irrelevant to Saiyans, but I guess you could see that by now. Since both men and women could reproduce, the labeling of things had to be from something other than sex."

"Let me guess," there are a few things I know about Saiyans for sure. And their predisposition to be warriors seemed to overshadow everything I knew. "There was a word for the stronger and the weaker in the pair of mates, wasn't there?"

He actually smirked at me, "Very observant."

Over the next couple of months, he started teaching me to speak our native language. I took to it like a duck to water. Although, I have a feeling that if I hadn't have learned it that fast that Vegeta would have become frustrated and quit teaching. That's probably why I tried so hard. I didn't want to let my mate down. After we had the base of the linguistics, he started teaching me about the culture. I was surprised at how much he remembered of his home world even though he had not been there since he was a child. He must really think Earth is strange compared to what he was accustomed to. I am not saying that Saiyan culture is strange only that it puts things into perspective here on Earth. Many things that we assume to be social expectations and norms are almost completely reversed but they too have a logical backing to them - just not the same logic.

One thing that I found very upsetting when I first heard it was what I am waiting for now. It seems that the Saiyans' reverence of strength and their almost worshipfulness of the moon combine to make a rather odd ritual. When a Saiyan baby is born, it is not considered a person until its first moon. Therefore, it is not given a name, referred to as a he or she, or considered part of the family until it survives to its first full moon. I found that rather harsh because it sounded like they did not even care about the child until it lived. But after putting things into perspective, it did make sense. In a world where the weak did not survive very long, it would probably be hard for parents to become very attached to their children if many of them would die on their first mission.

After some explaining, Vegeta said that some babies were luckier than other because of the timing of their birth. Many parents tried to time their births so that they were born just before or on the same day as a full moon. The ones born on the moon were considered destined for something special but my mate almost spat at that part. When I asked him how my father had a Saiyan name before he came to Earth as an infant, he growled and told me that he had been born during a full moon. I chuckled and asked when he was born. I probably should not have asked him that. It had made him angry and he refused to speak about it for weeks. Finally one night, he confessed right before we fell asleep that he was one of the unlucky ones that was born the day after a full moon. He had to wait years to be named.

I was shocked. How could someone live years without a name or a place in the family? He would not have been considered a boy until he was named - he was just an "it" as he had explained. I felt horrible for him or anyone who had suffered like that.

"How could you handle not being treated like a real person for so long? I mean, I can't understand how you could interact with someone who doesn't even have a name," I queried sadly.

"Oh, I had a name, just not a real one," he explained to further my confusion. "Saiyans found creative ways to address the unnamed children in their families."

"Oh, so what did they call you?"
"Brat, mostly. That was the most commonly used. Although sometimes 'little one' or 'child' or if I had been particularly mischievous, 'hellion'."
"Oh, so you calling Trunks a brat all the time would have been normal?"

"Whatever. Why are we speaking in the stupid human language again?"

That had slowed the conversation but it was probably the first time that I had been allowed a glimpse into my tortured Prince's past. The more he spoke of his culture, the more I learned about how it must have been like for him as a child. Now more than ever, I am angry with Freiza for destroying a place of such a rich culture. My first contact with Saiyans had been alarming and turned me against them but the more I learned of them, the more I have come to appreciate it.

Many of our cultural discussion of what would happen with our child came about in the dark of the night. It was always much easier to engage Vegeta in conversation as we lay together in his bed, our bed, at night. I think that there is something about him being held in my embrace that makes him willing to share things that he has not had to think about in years. I was willing to oblige because the longer we were together, the harder it got for me not to touch him. I loved to place my hand on his stretched skin where our child lay underneath in its womb. As the months drew on, those same hands tried to relieve the strain on my mate's body by massaging his back. Somehow, I found those moments we spent together even more intimate than when we were in the throws of passion.

But those days are over now. The child has been born and we are waiting. The full moon is coming in a few days. I will no longer have to refer to my first-born as an "it". The infant will have its name and a place in our family. I longed to call the sweet little thing by the name we decided upon after its birth. It was a strong Saiyan name that Vegeta explained was what his mother had been called. In just a few more days, our little Kinoko will truly be our daughter. I just have to wait a little longer.