Chronica belongs to the amazingly creative Mr. Yasuhiro Nightow, not me.

Dedicated to JasperK, whose inquiries sparked the idea for this tale. :)

NOTE: spoilers if you don't know who Chronica is. Set over 1,500 years post-manga, and 15 years after a massacre during which most independent Plants were slaughtered.

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Confusion

Year 1730 month 10 day 3, in the City of December

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Chronica assembled another box, tossed it onto the floor, and then pulled a picture off the wall.

Seeing that this particular piece of artwork was not easily breakable, she threw it violently into the new container. She began to reach for another picture, but the tears she'd been fighting to suppress for the last two hours would wait no longer. They blurred her vision so badly that she could barely see the wall, let alone what was on it.

She flopped down onto her couch, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed.

This had been a mistake. She cursed herself for daring to hope.

It was such a foolish hope – yet that hope was what made it hurt so much. She should have known better. She should have known that it was hopeless from the beginning, fifteen years ago.

At least she still had her job. She could go to another town, and keep busy there.

Maybe she'd request reassignment to the Seeds village. That's where all the young independent male Plants currently lived, under Vash's supervision, while they grew up. Maybe one of them could get used to her...?

She kept sobbing from a blend of pain and frustration, for about half an hour.

What was that? Someone was knocking on her door.

Who would come here, now?

She dabbed at her eyes with a cloth and peered through the peephole. Alex? She was so surprised that she automatically opened her door. She stood there, silently staring at him.

"Hello," Alex Saverem said gently. He nodded amiably and then walked past her into the house… without an invitation.

She closed the door, turned, and leaned her back against it.

Why had his twin brother come, today of all days?

Alex stood solemnly in the middle of the chaos-filled room, facing her. "Are you ok?" he asked. His expression was uncommonly gentle. There was no mockery in his tone.

"Why shouldn't I be ok?" she countered warily.

"Because, as much as I love my brother," Alex said, "sometimes he can do really dumb things. Unless I'm very much mistaken, he did something particularly stupid about three hours ago. Am I right? Or is everything perfectly fine between you two?"

Chronica tried to hold her chin still, but it would quiver. "I'm fine," she lied.

"Yes, I can see that," Alex said softly, but with a faint trace of sarcasm in his tone. He cast a significant look around the room that was currently filled with packing boxes and miscellaneous possessions haphazardly strewn about.

He calmly sat down in an empty chair near her couch, again without an invitation. "If you don't want to talk about it, I will."

She didn't appreciate the way he'd walked in and made himself at home. Since he was no longer likely to become her brother-in-law, she wished he would go away.

Yet, somehow, she could not quite bring herself to throw him out.

"What's to talk about?" she said angrily.

"Nicholas behaving like an idiot," Alex said, and then he grinned a lopsided grin at her.

The mention of his twin's name made her knees feel a little weak. She attempted to retain some composure. She pushed herself away from the now-closed door, and walked across the room to the couch. She pushed aside a box, sat down, sighed, and waited impatiently to see what Alex had to say.

As soon as she sat down, Alex looked out the window.

"Nicholas sees Papa still mourning Mama," he said softly, still looking out the window at nothing in particular. "Sometimes that makes him feel guilty. He worries about being disrespectful of his own late wife's memory, if he replaces her too quickly. However, that's not his only concern."

Alex glanced at her, as if to see if she was listening. Since she was, he looked away again and continued. "He's also very independent. He always has been. Depending on another person has always made him uncomfortable, even when that 'other person' was me, his own twin brother. He's even more stand-offish toward most of our other siblings."

Chronica frowned thoughtfully. What did this have to do with her?

"Do you begin to understand?" Alex asked. His voice was gentle. "Nicholas is getting used to having you around. That makes him nervous. He's uncomfortable about letting himself depend on you. So he's done something very foolish. He has behaved badly, and said unkind things, to try to chase you away."

She blinked, trying to absorb this new idea.

"I don't know what he said," Alex continued, "but I can guarantee you that most of it was nonsense. Maybe even all of it. He was only trying to push you away, to see if you'd go."

She would never have guessed... yet she should have. She had done that exact same thing. In fact, she'd done it so many times that she'd long ago lost count of how many times it had happened. She simply had not expected that type of behavior from one of Vash's sons. She'd believed every word of what Alex had just labeled "nonsense."

Had Nicholas lied to her? Probably not, or at least… not intentionally. More likely, his words had been exaggerations. The things he mentioned probably did frustrate him, but not nearly as badly as he'd claimed. And, if Alex was correct, there probably were times when his brother honestly thought that he wished she would go away.

He'd certainly said that he wanted her to go away loudly enough when they argued earlier today, about three hours ago.

Alex shrugged and looked out the window again. "I can't guarantee that if you stay, he won't ever do anything this idiotic again. However, I am pretty sure that he will be glad to see you haven't gone away, if you're still here tomorrow."

Chronica sat there, stunned, unsure of what to think or feel. She'd been so isolated, a lone independent Plant among humans, for such a long time. She really didn't know what to expect, especially not from a male Plant. She only knew that she was weary of being alone. Were all relationships this complicated?

"Are you saying that I picked the wrong brother?" Chronica asked, honestly curious.

"Uh, well…" Alex said, his fair complexion turning rosy, "I wouldn't say that. The interest in seeking a life-mate has not yet awakened in me. Papa says not to worry; in time, that will take care of itself. I'm just not there yet, and I have no way of knowing when I will be."

Chronica nodded. That matched what she had detected in his scent and his emotional echoes, among other indicators. It was one of the reasons why she had chosen to pursue his elder twin, instead of him.

"You're too much like your father," she said, barely above a whisper, as she looked away from him. "You wouldn't want someone like me, even if you were looking for a wife."

"I'm not a lawman, like Papa and Nicholas," Alex said, sounding puzzled.

Chronica almost smiled, and turned her gaze toward him again. "Before the Earth forces came here, in that unsuccessful attempt to rescue the people stranded on this forsaken planet," she said, "your father was a wanted outlaw. He had an extraordinarily high bounty on his head: sixty billion double dollars."

Alex looked startled, which did make her smile.

"He was known as 'the Humanoid Typhoon,' and called Vash 'the Stampede,'" she said.

Alex frowned thoughtfully, while looking in the middle distance. Then his gaze focused on her, and his expression became intensely curious. He waited silently.

"Setting aside situations that seem likely to have been your uncle Knives' doing, or else imposters," she said, "it appears that Vash was a vigilante. He put his life on the line, regularly, to protect people from being hurt or killed. He did that for the same reason you learned healing: because of his compassion for other people, both human and Plant."

Alex's blush returned. "I hadn't thought of it that way," he said.

"No, I suppose you wouldn't," she said. "When I … eventually … learned that your father was very different from his brother Knives, I got curious and started digging. It's been difficult to separate fact from wild rumors. Those were troubled times, and not all historians verified their data before they recorded it. What I just told you is a very brief summary of what I found."

Alex looked down, his expression still thoughtful.

"Some one like you, or your father, would never want someone as blunt, practical, and unromantic as I am," she said. "You'd want someone more like your mother, who's more sentimental than I and at least as tenderhearted as you are."

Alex's face flushed a little, but he continued his silent contemplation of the floor.

"That's why I'd thought that maybe…" she sighed, and said, "… maybe someone with more strongly pragmatic inclinations, like..." Her rebellious chin was beginning to quiver again, so she closed her mouth and looked away. She struggled to get herself back under control.

She couldn't bring herself to say his name. Somehow trying to say his name reminded her too much of their recent argument, and that made her want to cry again.

"You may not have been mistaken, at least not about Nicholas," Alex said gently. "He may not realize or admit it yet, but he grows fidgety when you're not around. He keeps looking every direction, as if searching for something or someone. His searching and fidgeting only stop when you appear."

"He seldom seems to welcome me," she said uncertainly, looking toward Alex's face again. She wanted to see if there was any reassurance to be found there.

Alex grinned. "Of course not," he said with conviction. "That would come too close to admitting how softhearted he really is, under his cool exterior. He's not as different from Papa as he often pretends to be."

Chronica could understand that, better than she cared to admit to anyone else. She looked at the half-packed boxes scattered around the room.

"Please," Alex said, "don't go. Not if the only reason you're thinking of leaving is that you and Nicholas had an argument. Go or stay because it's what you want to do, regardless of what does – or does not – happen between you and my brother."

"Why are you telling me this?" Chronica asked.

"Because Nicholas is unlikely to say it himself," Alex replied. "And because I love my brother, even when he is acting like an idiot."

He stood and extended his hand toward her. She stood and shook hands with him.

"I hope I've helped, and not done harm," Alex said gently.

"I think so," Chronica said. "At least, I have some new things to think about."

Alex nodded. "I'll leave you to it, then," he said. "I hope your evening goes better than your afternoon did."

Chronica opened her door for him, watched as he walked out through it, waved a farewell, and then closed the door. She leaned her forehead against her door for the space of several heartbeats. Then she turned around, and looked at the confusion in the room.

"Oh, Nicholas," she whispered, and began crying again.