DISCLAIMER: Trigun and its characters belong to Yasuhiro Nightow.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: 13,149 days ago, an angel graced this world with her presence. For too short a time, I was blessed to be part of her life. There may come another love, but there will never come another her. I think Steve Earle said it best –

"I'm nothin' without you

It don't matter what I do

If I win, or if I lose

Sweetheart, I'm nothin' without you"

Love and Loss

Vash the Stampede was already well aware of the woman standing next to him. He had not addressed her yet out of respect, letting her speak to him or not as she chose.

"Vash?"

"What's up?"

Meryl Stryfe's head was down, voice quiet. "I was wondering…if…well, maybe…" Then her head snapped up firmly as she cast aside indecision, the same look in her eyes as when she charged into chaos, her voice now strong and steady. "Would you like to go out with me?"

Vash wasn't drinking for the drink. No matter how much he wanted it to work the way it was supposed to, his physiology would not allow it. But there was one effect it would allow.

He was drinking for the hangover.

Somebody bumped into him. Sober or drunk, it didn't matter. It was an excuse, and that was all that mattered.

"Sorry, buddy." The man's voice was only slightly slurred.

"Your mother's a whore."

The man turned around slowly, not quite trusting his ears when he had a few drinks in him. "What did you say?"

Vash stood up, looking him dead in the eye. The target was shorter than him, as most people were, but solid. He would make a nice start. "I said your mother's a whore." It was said calmly, deliberately, a specifically calculated insult.

And it worked.

"Thought so." The man's punch was solid, barely affected by the alcohol in his system. He may have been buzzed, but he was used to fighting in levels of intoxication far worse than this.

Vash took it squarely, firing back with a hard shot to the man's bicep. He wasn't looking to injure anyone. Quite the contrary.

More people joined in. Vash, previously an expert at avoiding fights, had now mastered the admittedly not-hard-to-master art of starting them.

He had it coming. Should never have said yes to that first date with Meryl. If he hadn't, they never would have gotten involved. Never would have gotten married.

She never would have taken the assassin's bullet meant for his heart.

A fist drove into his stomach. Fricking amateur hour, should've been aimed at the solar plexus or to the left or right, where the organs were. But it still sloshed the alcohol in his stomach, and that brought on a little hurt.

Brass knuckles impacted on his jaw. This was more like it. He rolled with the impact, coming back with a weak kick that connected just enough for whoever it hit to think he was fighting back. Felt a hard shot to his liver, another one from behind hitting his kidney. Wasn't long before he started tasting blood in his mouth, felt it spurting from his nose, running into his eyes from some decent welts that had opened up.

This was good. There were some experienced brawlers here among the amateurs. They knew how to dish out some pain.

The assassin had given himself away somehow. To this day Vash didn't know what had tipped Meryl to the killer's presence, far enough away that he himself had only just picked up the glint of a scope. Had she detected something he didn't, or somehow just sensed it? Either way, she threw herself across him. Of all people, his wife knew more than most that he could protect himself, that he could survive the seemingly impossible; but of all people, his wife's love for him made protecting him from immediate danger a reflexive instinct that was faster than rational thought. So the bullet addressed to him delivered itself to her instead, entering her head and penetrating the front of her skull neatly. But rather than going through to him, it instead ricocheted off the rear of her skull and blew out the side of her head, taking most of her brain with it.

He remembered exactly what had happened, how it felt, even all these years later. He lived it fresh every time he slept.

Should've picked up the scope faster. Should've pushed her away from him the instant she was in the line of fire. Should've been faster, better, known what would happen before it happened and acted accordingly. Should've done just something that would have kept her alive and with him.

Should've. Could've. Didn't.

Vash was bodily heaved out of the bar, tumbling into the middle of the street and collapsing there in the sand. He was bruised, battered, and bloody. His face looked more like tenderized meat than a face. Though not broken, his jaw was going to be swollen in the morning. Felt like some ribs were broken, couldn't breathe without his chest being squeezed in a vise. Every major organ felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer.

Good.

The hangovers. The provoked beatings. The misery and pain. He deserved it all.

This was his punishment for being alive instead of her.