Journal of Meryl Stryfe Fifteenth Day after the Vernal Equinox New Oregon Territory

I woke up from another nightmare last night. It was the same one I've been having every night since Vash was forced to kill Legato. I remember that my heart was pounding and my breath was short and my body felt covered in cold sweat. The sweet metallic taste of adrenaline stung the back of my tongue. The dream disturbs me for a lot of reasons, some of which are obvious, but others...

I was there on the cliff, alone but for him, staring into his cold amber eyes that hypnotized me, staring like snakes at me, through me, into me. He took my mind in a very precise mental grip, cold and firm as the iron bars of a cage. In the dream it was a cage, I could feel it but not see it; but I knew it was there, all around me. I struggled and shook and beat myself against that cage but it didn't move; the door didn't even rattle. Slowly it started shrinking in on me, constricting around me like the coils of a snake and still those eyes stared at me. Legato shrunk and changed form, transforming into a raven and staring at me with those beady little eyes. He cawed once and burst into a thousand flapping ravens disappearing in a whirlwind of black.

And that's when I woke up... but not before I heard him whisper into my mind with a voice like the wind over a grave with just a touch of gravelly caw, like a raven's voice speaking to me.

"I know what you are... Meryl Stryfe."

I looked over to my friend and junior partner Millie to make certain that I hadn't disturbed her with my sudden surge into wakefulness. I don't want her knowing that I'm having trouble sleeping; she'd only ask what was wrong and I feel that this was my burden to bear.

I alone should shoulder the guilt for that day, the pain of forcing him to make that terrible decision... take a life or watch us die.

The rational part of me wants to argue that he would have been forced to make that decision anyway. Anyone could argue quite logically that Legato was insane, and he wanted to force Vash to make that choice, to take a life. If it hadn't been me and Milly, it would still have been an entire town full of innocents that would have been the leverage he used. Vash wouldn't have turned away from them. Apparently Vash's brother and by extension that human servant of his were had already made the decision for him.

I tell myself this, but most of me just listen to such sensible words however. The plain fact of the matter was that I was there... against Vash's wishes. He asked me to stay away and I went anyway so it was my fault that I had been trapped there, helpless, like a toma to the slaughtering pen. If I hadn't been there, who knows what could have happened. The outcome might have been different. Maybe he would have found another way. It a very very slim chance that it would have turned out differently, but my mind torments me with the fact that we can never know for certain. I know for certain though, that my and Milly presence did affect the outcome, however slightly... he took delight in telling me so while I was helpless under his power.

::So pleased you could join us,:: he said. It was awful, he was taunting me inside my mind and enjoying it.

::Vash would like having all of his friends here,:: he told me. Even now I feel like something vaguely unclean had touched me in way that doesn't wash out. I get the chill just thinking about it, so i try not to. It doesn't go away though.

He had known that the two of us would be, if not the deciding factor, then certainly the icing on the cake.

What's worse than the fact that I was in danger is the fact that I put Milly in danger. She's my junior partner and my responsibility as well as my friend. She has to trust that I'll make the right choices, the choices that will keep her alive and well, and I failed in that. I let my emotions dictate my decisions and she was put in danger because I wanted to follow him. My fault, I gave the order. Milly followed me. I should have listened to him.

I really should put the blame right where it belongs and lay the whole mess soley at the doors of the ones responsible for it; Knives and his psychopathic henchman Legato Bluesummers, but it doesn't matter to me that they planned it. My heart won't see that it was really they who masterminded and manipulated the situation until there was only one possible outcome for thier victim, Vash; it matters that I was there and had been a part of it. Maybe if I hadn't been there, things would have been different. I'll never know.

And for that I'll carry the guilt of it to my grave.

Meryl Stryfe

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Meryl scanned her eyes back over the words she'd written into the blank page of her leather-bound travel journal and debated taking the expedient of simply ripping it out and burning it. The stark emotional honesty teetered dangerously close to the edge of melodrama and smacked ever so slightly of angst. She frowned. She didn't like either state since they were both too near the region of whining for her taste. Meryl prided herself on being the sensible one, calm and capable, so she almost never indulged in talking about what was truly in her heart with another, even with Milly, for fear of being seen as weak or vulnerable (or even worse, pitiable). It would probably have been somehow less threatening if she just ripped it out and threw it away, but she decided against it in the end. Her journal was the one place she had to be completely honest, with no filters and no need to guard herself against other perceptions. If she couldn't be entirely honest with even her closest friend, and she already knew she wasn't honest in the reports she sent back to the head office, then there was no place but her thoughts for her (and those weren't always very helpful... too many little voices composed of all the people who'd shaped and moulded her growing up for her to find any useful peace and meaning there).

She could get rid of this written record of what was going on inside of her head; after all, anyone could stumble across this journal and read it. She could replace it with an entry that was nothing more than a humdrum account of her daily boring existence since the departure of Vash the Stampede... but she wouldn't. Despite the danger of someone being able to come along and read and know what was going on in her mind she knew she'd let the entry stand because by its very permanence it seemed to make the shadows that loomed larger in her mind feel less intimidating. It made her feel like someday she'd be able to flick on the light and see that that sinister shape in the dark was mothing more than an old coat rack.

Besides, her father had been in the habit of writing in his journal every day and sometimes just the act of writing in her own made her feel a little closer to him. It also helped her get all of her ducks in a row inside her mind before she had to start writing her report to the agency which was now, she was ashamed to admit, more half-truth than real truth.

:Part of me wishes he'd found me a little less trustworthy,: she thought wryly to herself. :I wouldn't now have so much to hide.:

Since he'd come clean with her, it had felt a little strange and a little nerve-wracking having to write those weekly reports to HQ about her assignment and not really be able to say anything about besides basically "all quiet on the western front... so far." Between Vash being outside of her purveiw off on a mission to save the world somewhere out in the middle of no-where, and the job at the saloon that she wasn't supposed to have because side-jobs while in the field were strictly forbidden by Bernardelli's unless they were directly related to thier assignment, Meryl's reports had gotten a little more creative than she was happy with. They weren't outright lies, but half-truths could often be more difficult to manage... one always had to be careful to remember just how much of the truth one has already told.

I know one thing I'm not putting in there, she thought dryly. If they didn't fire me outright for claiming my assignment isn't human they'd probably very gently suggest that I take a little time off with the company shrink to have a nice little mental break.

Still, it wasn't all bad. While it was true that Meryl detested the sort of menial work that came with her job at the bar (she hadn't gone through three years of college to wait tables and put up with sleazy assholes in some backwoods out in the middle of nowhere dammit!) it did have one thing going for it. There were times when it could be great stress relief.

Post Scriptum: she added

Another bar-fight broke out tonight. I won.

End Prologue.

& & &

Authors Note: No, I haven't actually dropped off the face of the earth, I'm still writing. I'm just a very lazy poster. I've been working on the main body to this one since before I ever started posting chapters of Home. It's my epic baby. It's also apparently so intimidating in it's granduer that just the size of it alone is enough to scare off potential beta-readers. I'm not kidding. I sent the file to a friend of mine to look over and he ran away with his tail tucked between his legs. I guess I'll have to be my own beta, so any errors in spelling that have slipped through my net are purely my own fault.

Kick back and relax 'cause we're in this for the long haul.