I don't wake up nearly as much anymore in the middle of the night. I don't see dark, thick liquid pooling in those steel blue strands. I don't see the wind whipping around his coat, the sands collecting in on his shoulder in the nose of what was once someone's skull. I don't see the smile on his too, too content face.
Things are pretty good. Meryl and Milly have helped myself and my brother find a place to stay. In fact, they've stayed pretty much with us these past few months even though they swear that they have their own home and that they have their jobs to attend to. It's nice to have them around. More than nice to see Meryl... But it wouldn't be fair to her, not when I'm not sure if what I see in her is just her or if it's someone else.
Alone I don't think I could have handled Knives so well. There's always
been something about him that drives me to the edge, that makes me reach
for anything - a gun, his namesake, a spoon - and I see lives in his eyes
that have passed before him BECAUSE of him Rem and the Gung-Ho Guns and
Wolfwood
and the remorse just isn't there when it should be
I can't understand it
and sometimes... sometimes....
Sometimes I still see tears in Milly's eyes.
She's taken Knives on as her own personal pet project. I suppose being used to raising her siblings, nieces, nephews, and cousins, as well as a good dollop of her own natural charm mean that she's the best out of all of us to handle a centuries-old spoiled brat. He throws the food in her face, she throws it right back. He threatens her, she stares him down (Knives, with all his power and delusions of grandeur, seems to quell a bit in the face of a six-foot giant wielding firepower that weighs almost as much as he does). He threatens others, she calmly fills his ears with the stupidity of the suggestion.
I think he might like her.
But still, she's human. So he says. When he deigns to speak to me.
Meryl is a wonderful cook. Give her potatoes and water and she'll dig up some spices to make the whole thing taste as if it were meant for kings. Even Knives is forced to admit that the smells coming from her pots and pans are irresistable to even superior entities - if the fact that while she cooks he hovers near the kitchen door is of any indication.
I look at her...
I see the face of a woman long dead
and that's not fair to her not when she deserves more
even though I know she wants me to be that "more"
I can't. Not yet.
Not when I still wake up screaming not when I still feel my arm quiver from trying to pull away, to get away, to find another solution there's always another solution, a way to save everybody not when he's still smiling at me eyes open or closed how could he do such a thing waste his own life in such a way how could Knives get him to do this and Knives is laughing at me I'm awake and he's calling me a fool...
She's always there to rush to my side to wordless hold me and my scars and just wait it out... wait until I stop seeing it...
...It's wonderful, her smell, her warmth, her compassion...
Even though she'll still knock me upside the head any time she wants.
I think I might love her. Both of her.
People still look at me and know who I am. They know who I am, though my name is cleared and the $$60,000,000,000 bounty removed. Some still hold their children close when I pass.
Those sun-colored glasses with their crooked frames.
That upward, blonde hair.
The red cloth, like her flowers, like the blood that I haven't spilt...
No.
That's not true anymore, is it?
In my hundreds of years of life in only the last year have I known true death after Rem. Life that was stolen from me. Life that was stolen because of me. Life taken by my own hands...
...I am still Vash the Stampede.
Love and Peace!
Destroyer of towns.
Humanitarian!
Taker of a single life.
...
I truly think I'll be okay now.