Author's note: Meryl's family background is, to the best of my knowledge, my own creation. I updated, slightly. Thanks, Grey, for suggesting it.
It was always just the two of us, in a way. Me, and my mother. Oh, Dad was there, yeah. He even brought home money, when he could find work, and when he didn't let his buddies talk him into dropping by the bar or the racetrack on the way home. He wasn't an alcoholic, but he'd drink too much when he did go to a bar, even if he couldn't afford it. And we had my two younger brothers and my sister. We all got jobs as soon as we were old enough, but the boys tended to think of their earnings as spending money, and Lena was always loaning cash to her boyfriends. I was the only one bringing home my whole paycheck. And I was the oldest, the one Mom could talk to. She'd confide in me, tell me her worries about the bills and the younger kids and Dad's easygoing nature. "He's such an optimist," she'd say, "he doesn't want to fight and struggle, he just wants to be happy. I wish he'd toughen up." And I'd seethe, because what gave him the right to worry about his own happiness when we were just trying to keep our heads above water?
I'm Meryl Strife of the Bernardelli Insurance Society, and my lifetime assignment is to keep Vash the Stampede under twenty-four-hour surveillance and minimize destruction in incidents in which he's involved. No easy task, especially since he's an idealistic fool who thinks he can make the whole world happy and peaceful somehow. Dad was a lot like him, although his optimism was more selfish. He always thought he could win betting on thomases, thought that he could somehow get drunk without spending too much. He just wanted a simple, happy life, he told me once. I'd been so angry I was shaking, all out of proportion to what he'd said, and I'd snapped "Everyone wants that, but how many people get it?" He looked at me, wounded, and I'd slammed the door on my way out of the room. I love my father, I can't help that. And I have a lot of happy memories from when I was little, before I realized he wasn't very reliable or cared about it. I love my father, but I don't like him very much.
Vash should be glad I've had a few years away from my family to mellow out.
I wasn't able to get to college until I was twenty and had some money saved up, because I didn't want to take out loans. I can thank Dad for that - there were always creditors at the door, and I grew up fearing debt. When I graduated, I was only too happy to take the job with Bernardelli. Job security, insurance, the whole package. A lot of people my age change jobs every few years, trying to find "a good fit." Not me. How well can a job fit you, anyway? It's not a pair of socks. It's a life. I wanted a nice, stable life, and Bernardelli gave that to me.
I threw myself into the company. I still sent Christmas cards to the people I knew at college, but I socialized mostly with my Bernardelli co-workers. That was how I met Millie. She reminded me, a little, of Lena. Not in appearance, of course. Lena is as tiny and dark-haired as I am, while Millie's fair, with dark blonde hair, and taller and stronger than most men, too big to wear off-the-rack women's clothes. But she has the same naivete about people, the same cheer and the same willingness to mother the world, even while something in her calls out for mothering herself. She more or less adopted me. I'm not exactly outgoing in social situations, but she certainly is, and on her first day at work she sort of swooped down on me in the coffee room.
"Have you been working here for a while? My name is Millie, Millie Thompson. I'm sort of lost, could you show me around?"
"Uh, sure?" I didn't realize it, but with that tentative response I'd gained myself a sidekick. She cheerfully and loudly requested to be assigned to a cubicle near mine, joined me at lunch and on breaks, and somehow or other turned herself into my friend. We worked out together in the company gym, took trips to the firing range together. It's not that I'm bloodthirsty (although she did choose the less lethal weapon, out of the two of us,) but all Bernardelli employees are trained in firearm usage for reasons of self-defense. I just wanted a weapon that could kill people if necessary. I hadn't really thought about killing someone in any depth, hadn't pondered whether I actually could kill or not.
Thinking about it now, I'm almost certain I couldn't.
I was actually glad when we were partnered on the Stampede assignment. Millie annoyed me at times, but I was surprised to find that I would have missed her. We were a good team, I realized, something the Chief had clearly noticed long before. And time and again, during the search for the outlaw, I was glad to have her by my side.
That's not to say that she stopped annoying me. When we met that shrieking imbecile in the red coat and she decided he had to be Vash the Stampede, I could have strangled her. Or him. Both of them. Bad enough that she kept arguing with me about it, but since she was convinced we had already found him, she wasn't looking as hard for other candidates. That left just me conducting the search, not at all what the chief had in mind. They put two of us on this assignment for a reason! I tried all these arguments on her, and more, but she wouldn't budge. "He answers to that name and he seems to handle incidents really well, Meryl," she'd say, and give me that sunny smile, and I'd grind my teeth, longing desperately for a wall against which to bang my head.
And he kept turning up in our path. I didn't get it. It's like he was following us, and it drove me crazy. I could not stand him. So irresponsible, so goofy, so sloppy. Vash the Stampede was the most notorious outlaw on the planet. He'd be cold, calculating, the complete polar opposite of this guy. There was no way this moron could possibly be capable of the destruction Vash the Stampede wreaked everywhere he went.
Because, of course, he wasn't. I learned that in April, even if I refused to acknowledge that he really was the man we'd been looking for. But I had to, even after he started that damn "Love and peace!" nonsense. What kind of idiot thinks he can change the world by chanting? We're talking about outlaws here, felons capable of mass destruction and death, and he thinks crossing his fingers at them before sending them to prison will reform them?
He just wants to make things right. His methods drove me crazy – still do – but his intentions are so damn good it sometimes makes my heart hurt. He sees so much good in people, and he cares so much. I'm not sure Vash is right about human nature. But I'm not sure he's wrong, either.
For a long time, I didn't care the way he did, thought he was crazy and inefficient. I didn't understand why he wouldn't kill dangerous criminals. It's not that I wanted to see people die, but I thought he was being very unreasonable. I don't know when it changed. In April, maybe, when I came so close to seeing those women killed, when I heard the little girl screaming because her mother was in danger. Maybe it was later on, that summer, when Monev the Gale killed 143 people in the township of Summit. Or maybe it was in the weeks following the destruction of Augusta, when the now-homeless refugees poured into the surrounding towns and people gave them shelter, food, free medical care. I've heard horror stories about the chaos in July after the incident there, but things weren't like that this time, at least not that I ever saw or heard. I don't know why.
For whatever reason, I started to care. I started to feel relieved when nobody died, and to get upset when they did. The Fifth Moon incident was just an amazing anecdote to most of my coworkers, but for so long all I could think about was Vash. Was he still alive? He hated destruction, he would never have done such a thing deliberately; if it were him at all. It might have been someone else, one of the cryptic "enemy" he'd warned us about. But legend had already established that Vash, somehow, put a new crater on the moon. I don't know why anyone thought they knew, and I don't know how blame was assigned to him. For that matter, I'm not sure why he was blamed for July.
I've never been quite so grateful as when I was put back on his case. I knew my presence wasn't needed; he did the best he could whether we were there or not. But our reports did, at least, clarify who was actually blowing things up, and... well, I'd missed him.
I felt kind of stupid about that. He's so irresponsible and so naive. He's always drinking and flirting and getting involved in things that really aren't any of his business, and he can't walk a thomas three yars without falling off. But he's funny, he's kind, he's... okay, he is nice to look at. He's good company, and he doesn't make me as angry as he used to. I don't blame him for fighting all the time now. But that doesn't mean I'm in love with him, no matter what Millie thinks. You can enjoy being around a man without feeling anything more. I guess I do, sort of, care about him a little, but it's not like I hear wedding bells and I wish Millie wouldn't either.