She turned away, her eyes and face shutting him out. "To be pricked by a thousand of your needles and never draw blood? That's a high price indeed," she murmured. He might not have caught it, but his hearing being exceptional he did, and so was pained to listen in.
Meryl opened her eyes and looked at him. "You don't love me. You probably never did Vash. But, that's just as well, you know? Because in the end, there are always going to be other things, other people, that will be more important to you." She shook her head. "You don't have to stop being a hero for me."
When upon future occasions he looked back on that event, he knew it to be a mistake that he could have prevented. But something in her words rung true; he couldn't stop being who he was for her.
However much he wanted it to be different, it couldn't. His life obviously wasn't meant to be simple, with a wife, two or three kids to chase around all day, good neighbors to visit with, play cards, talk about the weather. So many little dull moments, big spontaneous points, life rolled up in a jumble of hot summer days, laughter, and more love than the world knew what to do with.
That door to a bright, sunny future closed on him. She had stood just beyond the frame, looking up at his looming figure and asking to come in. She did not beg. She did not plead. She merely questioned his glossed-over paradigm; she kept her gaze toward those rose-colored glasses made golden.
She didn't win, though. He stubbornly refused to take in her view and put his glasses down. He had a job to do, just as she did. She did her job, he did his. Plain and simple and the way things had to be.
If they strayed it was because the narrow path they took constricted around them too tightly. A maniac with a deadly brother? A woman with a dangerous case? Stress piled too high for the two to escape by running away from the situation physically; something like honor and duty bound them to it. But there was nothing in any rules, spoken or not, that forbade secluded interludes between them.
Oh, it could be debated certainly; the issue was taboo. And arguments would often cry that there was indeed such a rule. But if rules were to be obeyed, they were also to be broken; and they shattered what precautions came between them like it was a revolution.
Maybe it was. Maybe they wanted to believe it was.
Whatever the freedom gained, other loads came to wear them down. Their shared mission got tougher. The stakes got higher. And not just anything was on the line folks; they started dealing in lives.
So, temporarily, they backed off. Cooled their heels. Let life take its course with them riding the waves. The shore they saw was far-off and scary, but promising. Maybe, just maybe, they could land upon it together.
Again she shook her head no. "No, Vash. I can't do this anymore. I can't be with someone that doesn't appreciate me. That doesn't love me. And you don't."
Her bags had been packed long before the conversation had taken place; she and Milly rode away from the little house they shared and went back to Bernardelli in December. As Vash stood watching from the doorway, Knives approached from behind and said, "It's good they're going away. We don't need them."
Vash, his anger building, turned and brushed by his brother. "What do you know?" he replied, his heart not really in the remark.
Knives looked out again and saw the shorter one had been staring behind her. Saying nothing else, only glaring back at the distancing figures, he shut the door.
Now nothing barred Vash and Meryl's path, for they went on separately.