Confluence
Three
A short time later saw Vash on his weekly journey to a little café in town that had the best donuts. He had skipped out early on working on fixing up the house on the outskirts he was staying in with Knives, Meryl and Milly. Between trying to get Knives to open up again and then working hard out under the burning suns, he had been left low in spirits and wanted to get away for a little while, maybe pretend he was drifting along like he always used to. He supposed he should at least be glad to be settled down for a little while but then he was used to the fast life of drifting and slipping back into that character, just for a short time, ironically made him feel a sense of stability that had been lacking ever since his duel in the desert.
Except his feeling of stability was threatened by the sensation that someone was watching him, which had been bothering him all day. He shrugged the unpleasant feeling away.
Once he had reached the small café and had his order in hand, he settled at a nice little glass table under the café's awning. He sighed happily and gazed at the light blue sky. Slowly drifting clouds stretched endlessly in all directions. It was days like today that made him truly glad to be alive. These were the kinds of moments that he wished he could spend with his brother again.
Vash stiffened. Someone was watching him. He could feel the stare. Slowly he turned around to look and promptly turned right back around sheepishly.
Staring at him across the street was, in Vash's humble opinion, a very hot chick. While he was thinking of what to do, she stood up from her seat and began to cross the street towards him. Vash nervously twirled a donut around one finger.
"Vash, you studly character!" he thought to himself. "Is it the denim jeans? Girls really seem to go for them…"
When he looked up she was standing right in front of him. To his chagrin he realized now that she was closer that her stare wasn't exactly a friendly one. He smiled anyway.
"Hello, miss," he said cheerfully. "Donut?" he added, offering the pastry still around his finger.
"Cut the crap," the strange woman said irritably, settling heavily into a seat across from him.
"What?" he asked good naturedly, his eyes nearly disappearing into his ridiculously huge grin.
"You know why I'm here," she said. Vash looked at her askance and then cleared his throat dramatically and adopted what he hoped was a seductive voice.
"Miss, I'd like to think you're here because of my irresistible charm but maybe it's because of my jeans… anyway, it would mean a lot if you'd eat these donuts with me."
The woman looked at him confusedly. Vash stared back at her with starry eyes.
"Excuse me," she said suddenly. "I think I've mistaken you for someone else." She started to stand up so Vash started talking, hoping to keep her attention.
"Oh people tell me that all the time! In fact, I've been told that I resemble the notorious outlaw, Vash the Stampede!" he laughed.
"Well, I'm sorry to have bothered you. I'll just go."
"Wait! I uh…I really did mean it about the donuts."
"Sorry, I have a gluten intolerance."
"Oh really? I myself am slightly allergic to wool and sometimes I get this rash on my…hey wait a minute!"
Vash got up to follow the woman, who was quickly walking away, but stood up too fast, knocking over the table, and tripped. The woman turned around at the clatter.
"Are you ok?" she asked Vash, who was currently flat on his ass and fretting about his donuts that were now littered all over the ground.
"I'm fine!" he replied with a smile, rubbing his leg where he had fallen on it. "Um…buy you some coffee?"
The woman just looked at him for a second and then she laughed quietly.
"I guess you are kind of cute…," she said. "Ok."
"Great!" said Vash. "By the way, what's your name?"
"Ultima," she said, extending a hand to help him up.
The bare skin of his hand barely brushed her extended fingers and all at once the two of them felt a wholly new sensation. A furious shock raced from the tips of Vash's fingers up his arm and spread out in to the very fiber of his being like a harmony. It wasn't a painful sensation but rather a supremely pleasant one, as of touching someone new but somehow multiplied. In that instant of pure feeling he glimpsed something hidden in her being, knew what she was, and she all of a sudden knew him. Knew him the way one knows one's name. It was instantaneously as if the two of them had known each other for years, each other's mannerisms, desires and fears a comfortable litany.
As the feeling ebbed the two of them were still. Slowly Vash lowered his hand and she did the same. The pair were awkwardly still amidst the bustling noises of the street. He was the first to break the formidable silence surrounding just the two of them.
"The one calling me to the north…was you," he said, partially to himself.
There were so many things he wanted to say, to ask. Where were you born? How old are you? What's your favorite color? Tell me your story. Tell me about the first time you felt sunshine and tasted bitterness. But he didn't say any of those things.
"Calling you?" she responded from what felt to Vash like a million miles away.
"From further south, all the way up here. I felt you," he said. "I could feel your being."
Back at the house Vash shared with the insurance girls, they talked all night. He told her everything. His whole long sad, sordid, happy, boisterous, disgusting and precious story. He told her about his childhood, Rem, Tessla, and Knives. About July and Jeneora Rock. Only the tolling of the bells outside let them know that time was passing. She listened stoically and he felt at ease, as though he were talking to the earth or the sky. A dam had burst inside him and every detail was rushing out.
When he was done, she began.
"I always knew I wasn't the only one. I just knew somehow."
She was born on the eve of the last run of a plant. It was the night watchman who found her and pulled her into the world out of her mother's carcass. He brought her home. Fed her, clothed her, raised her. From an early age she had known she was different and her abilities as a sentient plant became known to her quickly. Her father the watchman was a metal worker by trade and it was he who had eventually fashioned the sword that she carried. A sword designed to conduct electricity, her energy.
Now she understood who Knives was and knew he was the one she had met at the plant in North City and the one she had mistaken Vash for earlier. She understood how it was between Vash and Knives.
When the white morning sunlight began to filter through the lacy curtains of the living room, Vash excused himself to serve Knives breakfast. He quickly rushed some stale donuts and coffee up to his twin's room. Vash veritably threw open the door, eager to break the news to his brother, when he was greeted by the sight of Knives sitting at the edge of his bed.
"She's here, isn't she?" he asked Vash.
